How Ukraine's Elites Are Holding the Line

Three years after Ukrainians began to protest former President Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to sign an association agreement with the European Union -- protests that led to Yanukovych's overthrow in February 2014 -- Ukraine is still the battleground of a semi-declared war between Russia and the West. As such, it's doing a little too well both for Russian President Vladimir Putin and for his Western opponents -- and just well enough for its own people that they don't rebel again.

"Under normal conditions -- i.e. an absence of war -- Ukraine could probably survive as an independent state by 'muddling through,' as it has done for most of its short, post-Soviet life," Chatham House, the respected London-based international affairs think tank, writes in its latest Ukraine report. "Now, though, it will need greater political, patriotic and military resolve to stand even a chance."