(Eurasia Daily Monitor) Last weekend (November 21), Ukraine marked the first anniversary of the EuroMaidan—the public protests in Kyiv that lasted through the hard winter of discontent and brought down the corrupt regime of Viktor Yanukovych on February 21. As its war for state survival continues to rage, the country is in no mood for street festivities. Nevertheless, the EuroMaidan clearly still drives Ukraine’s policy, as was illustrated by the formation of a broad governing coalition pledging to restore the country’s territorial integrity and deepen its pro-Western orientation, including the goal of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (Gazeta.ru, November 21). United States Vice President Joe Biden was in Kyiv to express full support for reforms and to warn Russia against further violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty, which would be punished by new sanctions (Lenta.ru, November 21). This warning was reinforced by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who checked the deployment of new military assets in Lithuania and confirmed that the Alliance was carefully monitoring the movements of Russian troops and heavy weapons in eastern Ukraine (Newsru.com, November 21).
Russia’s leadership shows little interest in reflecting on the chain of miscalculations that started with the decision to forbid Ukraine to sign an association agreement with the European Union in November 2013. Moscow is now at a deadlock where it can neither afford to annex the rebel-held territory around Donetsk and Luhansk, nor abandon it (Forbes.ru, November 19). […]
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