Are Europe and the US not interested in Yatsenyuk anymore?

The parliamentary coalition in Kiev officially suggested the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Vladymyr Groysman, to the position of the Prime Minister and approved the future government. Tomorrow MPs are going to vote for resignation of Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The Chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the State Duma, Alexey Pushkov, thinks that the resignation of Yatsenyuk has been expected: “The demand for his resignation united almost all political forces in Ukraine. A variety of complicated maneuvers – up to use of the mechanisms of corruption, mentioned by Tymoshenko – allowed Yatsenyuk to stay in the Parliament during the previous elections. Now his time is up in this position. Yatsenyuk has turned into an additional factor of destabilization in Ukraine.”

According to the Russian MP, the USA, Germany, and other major Western players are not interested in an unstable and chaotic Ukraine: “They are interested in stabilization of the political process, in appearance of more stable, predictable outlines. Yatsenyuk made a bid for a radical break with the traditional policy pursued by Ukraine during the presidency of Kuchma, Yanukovych and even to a certain extent of Yushchenko. This policy was based on a balance between the West and Russia. For example, during the presidency of Kuchma this balance was more offset in the direction of Russia, the same was during Yanukovich's presidency. During Yushchenko's presidency it was more biased towards the West, but in general, it was a search for a balance. During the presidency of Yushchenko Ukraine had a large volume of trade and economic relations with Russia.”

Yatsenyuk headed for a break in relationship with Moscow. He rejected the trade and economic relations that were beneficial for Ukraine and filled its budget. “On the other hand, Yatsenyuk also took a course for a political war against Moscow. The evidence for this became his sensational, scandalous statements, which he proclaimed in Berlin and in the United States,” Pushkov states. He believes that the policy caused an interest in the USA and Canada, but the European Union reacted to this rather skeptically: “Ukraine must maintain a certain amount of relations with Russia. The EU is not going to pay financial accounts of Ukraine. The EU is interested in Ukraine as far as it can benefit from trade and economic relations with Russia. The degree of orientation is another matter. Ukraine can be self-sufficient only if it finds the right balance between all the major players.”

Pushkov said that Yatsenyuk did not fit into this strategy, the triangle of EU-Russia-Ukraine, and created additional problems for his own country. According to the MP, the United States “is not so much concerned about the financial and economic aspects, as about the political and geopolitical aspects. But for them, the Prime Minister, who is working all the time on the brink of political hysteria, on the verge of a foul, on the verge of his own fall, has ceased to be interesting.”