WHO: Keith A. Darden, associate professor American University’s School of International Service
WHAT: Ukraine’s continuing Kiev protests; Yanukovych meeting in Moscow.
WHEN: December 17 - ongoing
WHERE: Via telephone, in-studio, or at American University
Washington, DC (December 17, 2013) – Ever since Ukrainian President Yanukovych rejected a pro-Western EU set of accords in a strategic gambit to win Russian favor-- cheap natural gas and economic aid --protestors have turned out in Kiev’s Independence Square in the thousands despite frigid temperatures. Will the protestors dig in for a long winter? Did Senators McCain and Murphy’s visit make a difference? Was it meddling? Will Ukraine’s government try to disperse the protestors if the winter weather fails to freeze their resolve? What will Yanukovych return from Moscow with after his meetings?
American University associate professor Keith Darden is among the U.S.’s leading experts and scholars on the regional institutions formed among the post-Soviet states. Darden is an expert on the Ukraine. Specifically, Darden can discuss and analyze regional and national divides along what he calls the “imperial footprint” – the fundamental divide splitting the country along distinct pro-Western and pro-Russia cultural boundaries. Darden’s book Economic Liberalism and Its Rivals: The Formation of International Institutions Among the Post-Soviet States (Cambridge 2009) also explains why former Soviet republics joined different trade institutions some making new ties to the West while others choose to align themselves in the Russian customs union with Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Belarus.
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