12 November: demonstrators carry banners as they walk along through Kyiv during the "March of the Outraged" action. Photo(c): Olena Khudiakova/Zuma Press/PA Images. All rights reserved.Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko is spending his fourth autumn in power against a background of protest — protests provoked by the president’s lack of desire to fulfill his own promises in the fight against corruption. Pressure from the street still isn’t enough to break the wall the authorities have built around themselves, but protests are provoking conflicts inside Ukraine’s ruling coalition, where the war against an external enemy is moving into a stage of internal conflict.
Poroshenko is an avid user of Instagram, where earlier this year he congratulated Ukrainian citizens on the European Union’s decision to grant Ukraine a visa-free regime. “This is a final break with Russia after a 300-year union,” wrote Poroshenko, who, in recent months, has begun to abuse patriotic rhetoric.
There were expectations that Poroshenko, who took office off the back of the EuroMaidan street protests, would enact radical reforms in Ukraine. But the oligarch’s instinct to convert political status into material benefits has prevented him from breaking the corruption status quo.
