Interfax: Poroshenko’s categorical position on federalization, Russian language leads to deadlock – Russian analyst

MOSCOW. June 7 (Interfax) – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has assumed a position leading to a deadlock by rejecting Ukraine’s federalization and official status for the Russian language in his inaugural speech, which shows his inability to settle the conflict and signals that he might lose presidency in a foreseeable future, says Yevgeny Minchenko, the general director of the International Institute for Political Expertise (IIPE).

“The position assumed by Mr. Poroshenko leads to a deadlock. Categorically insisting on Ukraine’s unitary arrangement, refusing to grant official status to the Russian language, and dismissing any concessions to the southeast, Poroshenko has a very narrow corridor of options – in fact he virtually has none. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that he will serve the entire presidential term,” Minchenko told Interfax on Saturday.

“Poroshenko’s strategic mistake is that he has not calculated all possible political risks because of the position he has assumed,” Minchenko said. “The main mistake by Poroshenko and a group of oligarchs, who have made him president, is that they saw the Ukrainian revolution as Euro-Maidan, which was actually organized by oligarchic circles to moderate [former President Viktor] Yanukovych’s appetites, and they didn’t plan initially to overthrow him but wanted to intimidate him so that he should strip them of their tidbits,” he said.

The political situation in which Poroshenko has found himself after taking presidential office seems to be rolling down toward the escalation of the internal conflict, involving all regions of Ukraine, he said.

“In fact, all that is happening is the same revolution in which both the west and the southeast of Ukraine are involved. Bearing in mind the country’s extremely difficult economic situation, the population’s exasperation, and the amount of weapons that the people have in their hands, the revolution will inevitably continue in the west, in the center, and in the southeast. What we are witnessing today is not the ending of the revolutionary events but their beginning,” Minchenko said.