Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk’s stepping down is a mostly cosmetic move in response to the Dutch rejecting the E.U.’s association agreement with Ukraine, a country still locked in political dysfunction, says Gilbert Doctorow.
By Gilbert Doctorow
The significance of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s resignation speech has been given more weight by Western media than it merits. After all, he and President Petro Poroshenko were on the same side of the political equation even as they arm-wrestled for much of the last two years for greater influence and power. On the other side of the equation are the Pravy Sektor and fellow radical nationalist forces of the war party.
To those who may argue that notwithstanding his technocratic image as an economic reformer Yatsenyuk himself has been a fervent nationalist backing the extreme policies directed against Russia, I respond with another viewpoint that strips things back to essentials: Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko are two stiffs in knit suits, politicians both.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk
On the other side are the guys carrying guns who were the force behind the Maidan uprising and who are effectively controlling the front lines in Donbas and the border with Crimea. They represent the violence and threat of violence that remains unchanged by the departure of Yatsenyuk. And standing behind Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko are the untamable oligarchs.
It is these forces behind the throne that have made it impossible for Poroshenko to put through the various legal and constitutional changes necessary to implement the political side of the Minsk-2 accords. Therefore, after Yatsenyuk’s departure, Ukraine will remain at war with no reforms of substance possible nor any real crackdown on corruption thinkable.
This means the likely continued withholding of desperately needed International Monetary Fund money — and the leaders of Western Europe, at least those not ideologically committed to Russia-bashing, distancing themselves further from Ukraine. The question becomes how long Ukraine can defy the economic laws of gravity before descending into chaos.
As for the timing of…