DAVID STERN – Ukrainians fall out of love with Europe

KIEV — “The video is funny because it’s so true,” says my Ukrainian teacher, Katrin Khalabuzar, during a recent lesson at a Kiev hipster café.

I see why the video has struck a nerve with her and close to 50,000 other Ukrainians: It shows President Petro Poroshenko promising at various points that a deal to allow Ukrainians to travel to the European Union without visas would be signed in the very near future. First, he says the agreement will come by January 1, 2015. Then by December 2015. Then “no later” than 2016. And so on. It ends with a final and — so far unfulfilled — promise.

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