Domestic and External Threats to the Euromaidan Revolutionaries in Ukraine
Although separatist violations of the Ukrainian ceasefire are down, the Minsk-II accords are not being fulfilled in key areas. With more Russian-speakers fighting on the Ukrainian side, the conflict is not a civil war but a civilizational confrontation between Soviet Russophones seeking a future in Vladimir Putin’s “Russian World” and pro-European Russian and Ukrainian-speaking supporters of Ukraine's future in Europe. On the domestic front, the Euromaidan honeymoon is over and Ukrainians are becoming impatient with austerity and the lack of high-level criminal convictions of corrupt officials and members of the ousted Yanukovych regime. De-oligarchisation has not dislodged the oligarchs who together with nationalists and military veterans could constitute powerful forces for future counter-revolution. Will President Petro Poroshenko rise to the occasion, or follow the inglorious path of his predecessors?
