On Thursday the parliament of Ukraine endorsed the new government headed by Arseniy Yatsenyuk. He is chairman of the Batkivshchyna party (Fatherland) of former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko and is ex-minister of economy and of foreign affairs. That same day former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych broke his silence, sending a declaration to the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS stating he was the legitimate head of state and declaring the decisions voted by the government in Kiev to be illegitimate. At the same time tensions in the Southeastern, by a tradition pro-Russian regions of Ukraine are mounting, On Thursday morning, on the Crimean peninsula, which has the statute of an autonomous republic, armed men seized the buildings of the regional parliament and of the government and hoisted the Russian flag. Later, the MPs voted in favour of holding a referendum to decide Crimea’s future – inside or out of Ukraine. The date is May 25 and coincides with the early presidential elections in Ukraine.

“The events now unfolding are an attempt to institutionalize the victory of the opposition in Ukraine,” comments international relations professor Nina Dyulgerova, an expert on Russia and post-Soviet territories.

“What we have are two sides which will begin a protracted dispute over which is the legitimate side, based on the assumption of there having been no early presidential elections,” Prof. Dyuglerova says. “In practice we have Russian flags flying over Crimea and that raises the question: isn’t this another turnabout in the situation in Ukraine. I still maintain that a unified Ukraine is of interest to global and regional players. If the country was to split up, no one, except Russia would take any interest in it. If it comes to federalization, two thirds of Ukraine would become part of the Russian Federation, but the economy and industry are in Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine, however deadlocked the situation may be. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was categorical that Poland does not want Ukraine to split up. And this means that he does not want a Western Ukraine because he has enough domestic problems of his own to be dealing with or to be taking a serious financial commitment to a poor periphery. To my mind, the dynamics of events are leading to extremism."

We recognize the legitimacy of the parliament of Ukraine and recognize as president the head of state voted by the Rada, said Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly. According to a declaration voted by the MEPs in Strasbourg the EU must urgently grant Ukraine financial assistance and impose the sanctions planned on the people responsible for the violence. Ukraine’s new Finance Minister Oleksander Shlapak is hoping the International Monetary Fund mission will visit Ukraine next week to draft a new rescue package for the country totaling at least 15 billion USD. The IMF’s head Christine Lagarde stated in a communiqué that a mission would be sent to the country in the coming days. Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier declared after a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry that Washington was prepared to grant Kiev 1 billion dollars’ worth of aid. On his part Kerry said that after a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov he had received assurances that Russia would respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

According to Prof. Dyulgerova, the EU cannot provide the billions Ukraine needs to bring its economy back on track. It may provide a political umbrella for a deal with the IMF.

“I am asking myself: will any voter from any EU member country agree to billions being taken and given to a country that is not a member of the Union and will not be of any help as far as the economic or political security of the EU is concerned. How can money be handed over to people who can give no guarantee how it will be spent? I am not expecting any abrupt steps to be taken by the EU because Ukraine will be part of the election campaigning for a new parliament. Perish the thought that this rhetoric will be bound up with any concrete and real proposals or their putting into practice that would enable Ukraine to emerge from the political and economic turmoil,” Prof. Nina Dyulgerova said.

English version: Milena Daynova