"What is this comic opera being played in Albania?" (Kemal Atatürk on President Zogu's elevation to monarchic status)
When I began writing this, Kolomoiskiy was still governor of Dnepropetrovsk and had yet to back down in his confrontation with the Junta. It was my contention at the time that things were not as simple as waiting to see who the US would back in order to judge the outcome; that they were not necessarily minutely controlling the situation; that—to quote Iraq's one time Information Minister, Muhammad Sa‛eed al-Sahhaf—"
they don't even control themselves!" Subsequent events certainly give the impression that a
pronunciamiento from the US Ambassador is all it took to settle the issue. Nonetheless, I would still contend that the US is not needed in order to explain Kolomoiskiy's apparent surrender (a rally is planned for this Saturday in Dnepropetrovsk which may indicate what, if any, moves he has left to make).
My reasoning for this is not that Frankenstein's monster has eluded the control of his creator, as Ukraine slips deeper into chaos (chaos, precisely, is
one of the forms that US control takes); nor is it that the US has other concerns, including domestic political ones, that distract her attention
. It is simply that even openly avowed US support is no guarantee that they will not abandon you in favour of somebody that they may have explicitly rejected or reprimanded. The US is working through Ukrainian actors, many of whom have the wherewithal to pursue their own personal goals, which may at some point coincide with those of the US—
whoever appears to them most capable of achieving those goals is who they will ultimately back, even if they do not publicly proclaim that support.
Comment: The EU is shooting itself in the foot. One can only imagine what pressure the US has on the EU.