[LINK] "Poroshenko's choices"

[rfmcdonald]

Open Democracy's David Marples is appropriately concerned about the prospects for positive change in a Ukraine faced with a whole slew of adverse issues, domestic and otherwise.

After almost six months in power, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, appears to have strengthened his position following the victory of pro-Western parties in the 26 October parliamentary elections. In theory, with a new parliamentary coalition, Poroshenko can now turn to address the two most pressing problems — the breakaway regions of the Donbas and radical economic reforms. Concerning the Donbas, he has already responded firmly to the ‘elections’ in the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics’ (LNR and DNR): the elections were illegal and violated the Minsk Protocol signed in September.

Poroshenko’s position, however, is weaker than it might appear.

In the first place, whether or not the ‘elections’ in the DNR and LNR broke the Minsk Protocol, the Minsk accords themselves represented a form of recognition for regimes that can at best be called ‘thugocracies,’ and which are unsustainable in the long term. Even if those regimes should manage to expand their territories to capture Mariupol or other towns previously under control such as Slovyansk, the DNR and LNR cannot survive without support from Ukraine for such basic commodities as food and water. Yet in order to reach an agreement that would halt the advance of Russian regular troops, the Ukrainian side gave de facto recognition to the two Donbas regimes when they signed the Protocol in Minsk on 5 September.

[. . .]

Second, while Western media circles hailed the Ukrainian parliamentary elections of 26 October as a triumph for pro-European forces, the elections were probably not such an unqualified success in the eyes of Poroshenko. The turnout was woefully low by Ukrainian standards, at 52%, even accounting for the difficulties in voting in some regions, signifying the weariness of the electorate. Moreover, the popular success of Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front, which received a higher percentage of electoral support than the President’s Petro Poroshenko Bloc, may have secured the coalition, but it also represents a potential divergence of official goals. Yatsenyuk took a more militant position in his election campaign than Poroshenko; and the People’s Front became known as 'the party of war,' with a more confrontational anti-separatist stance.

[. . .]

The national currency, the hryvnia, has fallen dramatically — it was trading at over 16 hryvnia to the dollar on 11 November — and Ukraine has lost several important industrial bases since the spring of 2014. Currently, 40% of the national budget is devoted to debt repayments and servicing, and GDP has fallen by an estimated one-third over 2014. The only solace is the agreement on reduced prices for Russian gas, achieved as a result of discussions between Ukraine, Russia, and the European Union. But the country remains the third largest purchaser of Russian gas after Germany and Turkey.