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Feb 28, 2014 11:30 am | Richard Burt, Lee Feinstein
As
a new “Unity Government” gets down to work in Kiev, the factors
determining the political and economic trajectory of Ukraine will be
determined less by a tug of war between Russia and the West than by the
actions and decisions of the leadership that emerges in Ukraine. The key
factors will be the ability of the new leadership to unify the
mainstream opposition and marginalize fringe elements, while satisfying
the demands of the protestors of Independence Square who are distrustful
of the Ukrainian elite and impatient for change. The process will be
long and messy, and the outcome is unclear. The one thing that could
transform Ukraine's domestic crisis into an East-West confrontation
would be a threat—real, perceived, or manufactured—to Ukraine's
Russian-speaking population, which could trigger an intervention by
Moscow. Unfortunately, there are some early signs of this in Crimea.The Maidan revolution represents a tactical defeat for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had sought to incorporate Ukraine into a new “Eurasian Union,” as a kind of successor to the former Soviet Union. As Ukraine’s major trading partner and virtual monopoly supplier of energy, Russia still holds many cards which it can and will use to exert influence on Ukraine, Europe’s second-largest country and the historical center of the Russian empire.
read morehttp://nationalinterest.org/commentary/ukraines-future-9977
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