Two years of Euromaidan and strategic perspective of the Ukrainian crisis

Abstract

Question of the future of Ukraine is globally important and requires answer before it is closed in order to be ready for final result. Ukrainian crisis has internal and external dimension. First part of the article analyzes the consequences of Euromaidan. Two years is a period of time, which makes possible some preliminary conclusions about the development of new Ukraine, and it can be said that political and economic system of the country is deteriorating. At the same time disappointment of the people about the course of development of the state is growing. Therefore theory of expectations and reality discrepancy can be applied to predict the future of today‘s political regime in Kiev. The conclusion is that next social explosion (revolution) in Ukraine is highly possible in a short-term, because unacceptable gap between expectations of Ukrainians and reality they live in has almost reached critical margin. Still situation in the country is strongly dependent on the position of two big external actors – the West (the United States and the European Union) and Russia. On the one hand, they stabilize the conflict – the West helps Ukrainian government to survive politically and economically and manages social and oligarchic protest potential in the state; Russia supports separatists of Donbass, but holds them from further military aggression, accentuating implementation of Minsk Agreement. On the other hand, Ukraine definitely is a hostage of „great geopolitical game“ between Washington, Brussels and Moscow, and is not a subject, but object in it. Strategic perspective of the Ukrainian crisis will depend on Russia‘s ability to survive economically and make the West believe it is better to retreat in Ukraine; on the American „hawks“ perception of this ability and on the damage they and the EU are ready to suffer from the Russian side. Supposed additional value of the article is that it tries to conceptualize (also theoretically) the current national and foreign situation of Ukraine and propose prognostic framework (the main variables) to predict its future.