ABSTRACT
Ukraine has been faced with fundamental challenges to its sovereignty and territorial integrity since the end of 2013. Over the five years since the beginning of the Euromaidan revolution, the country has seen part of its territory annexed by Russia (the Crimean peninsula) and has fought a civil war against Russian-backed rebels in the Donbas region. As attitudes among political elites and ordinary Ukrainians have grown more hostile towards Russia and more isolationist towards the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, a volatile status quo has emerged on the ground which demonstrates that the various sides in this conflict have reached a dead end with their policies. Apart from the tremendous human costs that this imposes on Ukraine’s citizens, this situation bears the seeds of undermining its own long-term sustainability – not merely in the context of the crisis in Ukraine, but potentially across the post-Soviet space from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea.
