Elizabeth Pond, the respected American author who has reported on Eastern Europe for three decades, recently wrote a eulogy for Ukraine. The seizure of Crimea, Russia’s military rout of the Ukrainians in the east, and the humiliating ceasefire imposed on President Petro Poroshenko, she wrote, meant that Ukraine was again “a borderland playground” for its mighty neighbor.
Poroshenko, says Pond, gambled that the Ukrainian army could defeat the Russian-backed insurgents without provoking an outright Russian invasion. He was mistaken.
Ukrainian military defeat in late August was followed by a September 5th ceasefire, in which Poroshenko conceded three years of special status …read more
Source: The Huffington Post