ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a review of the ongoing security conflict in Ukraine and the contemporaneous economic and political crises. We use big data of the violence in the East of Ukraine to argue that the local variation in the violence is best explained by economic rather than ethnic or political factors. We also discuss the resistance of the Ukrainian public to the conflict resolution strategy outlined in Minsk and Minsk II agreements. This resistance is caused by lack of legitimacy of these agreements, where the major stakeholder – the public – has been denied a voice in framing these agreements. We suggest that the EU policy in Ukraine should be focused on creating economic opportunities for the general public (economic resolution) and using a bottom-up approach to include all parts of the society in deliberation of how to resolve the conflict (political resolution). These actions should be complemented by strict conditionality of the support from the EU that requires anti-corruption policies that (a) dismantle the state economy, but (b) more importantly dismantle rent-seeking networks of oligarchs and restore justice.
