The embattled Eastern Europe country is finding few real allies in its struggle with Russia.

Lonely Ukraine

by Judith Miller

There was no shortage of heartfelt pledges of support for Ukraine’s embattled government from diplomats, officials, scholars, and journalists this weekend in Kiev at the 11th annual gathering of the Yalta European Strategy conference, or YES, a kind of Davos East. But as conferees nibbled on canapés and raised glasses to Ukraine’s valiant struggle against Russian aggression, evidence mounts that Ukraine is likely to remain alone in its existential struggle for freedom and sovereignty.

In Donetsk and other towns and villages in the war-torn east, some 450 miles from the capital, fighting continued between Ukrainian-government and Russian-backed rebel forces, despite the 10-day-old ceasefire, the heart of a peace plan whose prospects depend almost entirely on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s intentions.

In a keynote speech on Friday night, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso announced that the European Union was delaying the implementation of part of its free-trade pact with Ukraine to which Russia objects. The amended pact was approved Tuesday by the E.U. and Ukrainian parliaments. Ukrainian lawmakers also approved two other laws intended to shore up the country’s fragile cease-fire with the rebels after five months of conflict in which 3,000 have died. But the laws, which grant amnesty to rebels who have not committed war crimes and temporary autonomy to the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, much of which pro-Russian separatists now control, are widely seen as further concessions to Russia.

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