Poroshenko faces judgment day as Ukraine votes

Pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko faces a stern test of his unpopular belt-tightening measures and stuttering anti-corruption drive when Ukraine votes in local elections on Friday that exclude the pro-Russian separatist east.

The polls come during a lull in fighting and amid growing worries that Ukraine is slipping off the global agenda despite just turning into Europe’s second-poorest country and still standing as a bulwark against Russia’s feared expansion west.

Twenty months have passed since the ex-Soviet nation sparked the world’s imagination through unceasing protests that toppled a despised Kremlin-backed leader and appeared to anchor Ukraine’s future with the West.

But Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea and the pro-Moscow eastern revolt that followed in which more than 8,000 died have seen the nation of 40 million stripped of its most strategic naval bases and industrial heartland.

The prospects of Kiev winning back the Russian-run Black Sea peninsula now seem remote.