THE romance between Ukraine and the European Union is full of unmet expectations. Ukraine wants commitment from the EU; the EU wants proof that Ukraine has really changed. When EU officials visited Kiev on April 27th for a joint summit, they snubbed Ukraine’s requests for a peacekeeping force in the Donbas, for additional military aid and for visa-free travel. Western financial assistance is trickling in, but Ukraine wants more. “Greece already received $300 billion, with no war, with no Russian tanks,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the prime minister, said after the summit. Ukraine, he complained, has received just one-tenth as much. The EU says help will come, but only after reforms. “You keep reforming, we keep supporting,” said the European Commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker. European leaders want to see Ukraine implement its new laws and decentralise governance, as agreed in the Minsk peace plan. Some worry that failure to do this will invite Russia to relaunch the war. Already violence is ticking up near the rebel capital of Donetsk and the Ukrainian-held port of Mariupol. Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, takes umbrage at charges that reforms are lagging. Lawmakers recently passed legislation to break up gas monopolies, increase energy-sector competition, and unbundle the state gas conglomerate Naftogaz, a fiscal black hole. Last month Mr...
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