The New York Times quotes Transatlantic Relations Program Senior Fellow Adrian Karatnycky on Petro Poroshenko’s candidacy in the upcoming Ukrainian presidential election:
“You can have a kind of a civil war and this kind of gray zone and be completely separated and face a higher degree of economic sanctions,” said Adrian Karatnycky, an expert on Ukraine at the Atlantic Council, describing the choice facing Mr. Putin. “Or you can see if it’s possible to bargain with this new guy, who has businesses in Russia, who has never been known to be a big ultranationalist.”
[…]
“The reasoning on Poroshenko is that he is a pragmatist and he was in the Yanukovych government,” Mr. Karatnycky said. “He is a person who is a dealmaker. From that point of view, it may mean that Putin is willing to give it a chance of trying to get something out of this.”