The reversal—fueled by overt and covert “inducements” from Moscow—eventually led to his ouster by popular demand, his impeachment, and creation of an interim government in Kiev. It also provided the excuse for Putin to invade Ukraine and, in turn, annex Crimea. Niceties aside, the Ukraine crisis boiled down to this: a majority in Ukraine wanted to move the country toward the West and Moscow used all its hard power tools to try and subvert this from happening.

Since then, Putin has been waging a low-intensity conflict against Ukraine by providing intelligence, weapons, training and personnel to insurrectionists in eastern Ukraine—while also cutting off natural gas supplies. So far, the response from the West has been modest with the threat of increased sanctions from Washington and Brussels should Russia continue to play the spoiler.

This past week, Ukraine’s newly-elected president, Petro Poroshenko, upped the ante by signing the association agreement with the EU. And, just yesterday, he ended the (in-name-only) ceasefire between Ukrainian security forces and pro-Russian rebels and declared that his government would “attack and free our lands” from the insurrectionists.

Poroshenko’s choice to end the ceasefire shouldn’t come as a surprise. If a government is to be called a government, it must at a minimum be able to control its territory and have a monopoly on the means of coercion. Ukraine’s new government could not continue to be seen as unable to do either. Its very legitimacy was at stake—a problem Putin was only too happy to keep front and center. Now, we’ll see how Putin responds to the Ukrainian government’s latest decisions; even money says it won’t be pretty. And if that’s the case, will Brussels and Washington roll over once again?