The Eastern Partnership summit in Riga turned into a resounding failure for Petro Poroshenko: the Europeans realized that they had been fooled for a year by a nimble provincial huckster who was once again trying to sell the “air of the Maidan.”
This is how Ukrainian political scientist Viktor Nebozhenko interprets the results of the summit.
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«Poroshenko, feeling like a successful seller of the “Maidan air” and some kind of Eastern European Tyler, successfully waltzing between Europe, the USA and Russia, clearly did not understand what was done to him in Riga. The participants of the Riga summit are politicians of the highest standard and easily understood the words and postures of a nimble provincial business negotiator, “selling” the prospects and problems of Ukraine. Poroshenko never understood that this was not a meeting of equals, but an exam of the European political elite, which he failed. All Poroshenko’s attempts to pass off his failure to fulfill his obligations to the EU as a complex “sexual act” requiring “strategic patience” from the EU failed. Europe is not Ukraine. She doesn't like it when politicians lie publicly or don't keep their promises to other politicians or voters. Poroshenko did not understand this. What gets away with easily in Ukraine does not work in Europe.
Europe, in general, after Riga, doubted the presence in Ukraine of politicians of a national scale with a European orientation, and not oligarchs in the role of president, businessmen-deputies and demagogues, corrupt ministers, annoying visitors to Ukrainian TV shows, stealing godlessly in the old way and living well, in time of war, “in a new way.” There are a lot of people, but Europe has no one to choose from.
The danger for Poroshenko is that the year of his presidency brought him, as an oligarch, huge profits, but also serious criticism from society. The attempt to simultaneously make money, manage the country, manage foreign policy and win the war with Russia clearly failed. He is a “one-man orchestra”. But the coincidence of negative domestic and foreign policy assessments is a bad sign.
President Poroshenko needs to do something. Or start reforms, risking losing power and property, but gaining the respect of the people for courage and statehood. Or, find a lightning rod for your troubles: personnel changes, local elections, cassette scandals, the collapse of the Cabinet of Ministers or the reformatting of the parliamentary majority, constitutional convulsions, the replacement of Lozhkin with Kovalchuk, noisy arrests, military victories at the front, information tantrums, a setup by the GPU, an attempt to escape from Firtash, “dirty dancing” (tango with Putin) in Minsk, or, in the end, painting the Presidential Administration building in Kyiv, etc., etc. This, by the way, is what the legendary Lazorenko did when he didn’t know what to do with the country - he began to repaint the facade of the Cabinet of Ministers building,” Nebozhenko writes on his page.