As Goes the East

Dmitri Trenin says “absent urgent and massive assistance to Ukraine coupled with a strategy of economic reform, Eastern Europe’s largest country will plunge into a tailspin and likely disintegrate.” It starts to look like he’s right, as Ukraine’s national government is shown to be unable to carry out its most basic function – protecting the security of its citizens – in the east. The irony is that Kyiv’s putative reformers can only wield the defense forces bequeathed by Yanukovich, which, in Yanukovich’s east, are keen that Kyiv not succeed.