Ostensibly it was a protest against the Verkhovna Rada’s preliminary approval of Ccnstitutional changes in line with Minsk II agreement of last February, dictated by Russia, consented by Western powers, and accepted by the Ukrainian government under the gun after military defeat at Debaltseve in Donbas.

The crux of the Minsk agreement was a commitment from Kyiv to make constitutional changes that will provide for a “special status” within Ukraine for the Donbas region now under Russian-separatist control.

The proposed constitutional changes include an amendment stating that special status will be defined in a separate law. But the wording of the “special governance law,” passed in March, is not what Moscow’s proxies in Donbas are willing to accept.

The betting in political circles is that this legislation is not quite what the Kremlin wants, and the outcome will be a new phase of war in the east. Meanwhile, work on constitutional changes in Kyiv provides the West a way to say that Ukraine if fulfilling the Minsk pact.

To say that President Petro Poroshenko is under a tremendous pressure in the ongoing war with Russia, collapsed economy, and a flood of refugees would be the mother of all understatements.

Only someone from a loony bin would want to have his job. And yet the organizers of rioting that shook Kyiv in the last day of August seem to be ready to stake out a claim that they would have done better in the political tussle with the Kremlin if they were the government.

It is doubtful that someone like Dmytro Yarosh, leader of Right Sector has fallen for such flapdoodle.

More likely, the patriotic energy of large crowds is crudely channeled to demand more assurances from the government that no surrender to the Kremlin is in the cards.

Poroshenko had on several occasions recently restated that there will be no special status. On the same afternoon when rioters were storming the parliament, his words were: “Draft constitutional amendments do not foresee special status” for Russia-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk.

That statement was not quite truthful, even if it implies that “special status” law doesn’t cut mustard for separatists.

The key problem remains Ukraine’s inadequate military power vis-à-vis Russia. A test of endurance is the most Ukraine can offer. Finland in 1940 saved itself from Soviet conquest by making war too costly for the Soviet Union, with maximum commitment fighting in the snow and frozen forests (not the famously exaggerated Mannerheim line tale).

Poroshenko’s job is made more difficult by an uneasy relationship with Ukraine’s oligarchs. Ukraine’s economy is defined mostly by a super-wealthy elite — as it is in almost every capitalist country. That’s where the money is. Attacked by Russia in the Crimea and Donbas, Kyiv with an empty treasure bin turned to oligarchs, because to wage war three thing are required: money, money, and money (as Napoleon Bonaparte discovered in his time).

Some of the oligarchs came through, as did Igor Kolomoisky in Dnipropetrovsk and probably some others, including Poroshenko, most likely. Not being a saint, Kolomoisky later demanded privileges in return, resulting for a while in some real or faked confrontation with the president.

The corruption plague involving the oligarchs has dogged Ukraine for a long time. Getting rid of them always sounds divine, but it cannot be done in Ukraine for the same reason it cannot be done elsewhere — they are synonymous with big business.

Examples of abuse of power by corporate conglomerates are plentiful in the United States. For instance, the state of New Jersey sued the Exxon Mobil Corporation for $8.9 billion damages in decades of contamination of more than 1500 acres (about 600 hectares) of wetlands, meadows and water, in litigation going over 10 years. Wrote The New Times (March 4, 2015):

|As a judge deliberated whether to assess the $8.9 billion in damages New Jersey sought,….. Governor Chris Christie’s chief counsel inserted himself into the case, elbowed aside the attorney general and career employees who had prosecuted the litigation, and cut the deal to take $250 million and settle the case.”

This left 97 percent of the cost of cleanup to taxpayers. Imagine the uproar if someone high up in Ukraine had done a similar deal. But in the USA the Exxon cleanup heist caused hardly a stir, as the media is overflowing with descriptions of horrid daily shootings, sex assaults, and sports scores. As gang violence in cities is on the rise, the police became more timid as a result of loud criticism from politicians over strict enforcement of public order.

Incidentally, the Exxon Mobile contributed $500,000 to Republican Governors Association, where Gov. Chris Christie’s was serving as chairman in 2014. Also, he is still suspected of linkage to a high-profile so-called “bridge-gate scandal” two years ago. At that time, several officials concocted a deliberate traffic jam at New Jersey’s main bridge to New York, by faking road repairs to punish a local town mayor who earlier refused to endorse Mr. Christie in his run for governor. Doesn’t that beat some of the corruption sagas in Ukraine? Christie is now running for Republican nomination for president.

Poroshenko’s job of dealing with Russia is not made easier by the ongoing panic in Europe over the huge illegal immigration from Mideast and Africa that seems unstoppable and is driven by war and extreme poverty. It has caused a severe backlash in Europe’s countries, and most of them now refuse to accept more refugees, leaving Italy, Greece and Germany with numbers growing to hundreds of thousands.

Each year it is becoming more clear that this “migration crisis” is only the beginning of a much larger population shift due to worldwide climate change. NASA officials just warned that rising sea levels could affect 150 million Asians living within feet from ocean shorelines. The severity and duration of the recent Syrian drought is a major factor in displacing half of that country’s population. The entire Mideast normally produces only 37 percent of its food, the rest is from imports that become more expensive.

Mediterranean boat sinkings, barbed wire across Europe, or NATO forces will not stop what amounts to an uncontrollable invasion. No one can predict how it will change Europe. How it will affect the European Union’s relations with Russia and Ukraine, or the Kremlin’s behavior, no one knows.

Chances are Russia will remain Russia – mainly because it abhors change. It is safe to say that Ukraine will remain mainly on its own. Nothing can be achieved by rioting in Kyiv or by anger against Poroshenko.