“Ukraine risks a return to the pattern of failed economic policies that has plagued its recent history.”

Lagarde’s message struck at the heart of concerns of Ukrainians who joined three months of enthusiastic but ultimately bloody protests that brought down the ex-Soviet republic’s Russian-backed leadership in February 2014.

Polls show public frustration with Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk mounting and hopes ebbing away that Ukraine was finally ridding itself of mind-numbing bureaucracy and bribe-taking.

That angst was encapsulated by this month’s resignation of reform-minded Aivaras Abromavicius as economy minister in protest at alleged influence-peddling by one of the most senior members of the president’s inner circle.

The IMF chief had said bluntly that it was “hard to see how the ($40-billion, 35-billion-euro) IMF-supported programme can continue” without Ukraine making good on its promise to take radical streamlining steps ignored in the past.

Both Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko know they cannot survive without foreign assistance and that early legislative polls could return to power Russian-backed deputies who just might be enticed into warming Kiev’s frozen relations with Moscow.

Ukraine’s central bank chief warned that the mounting uncertainty was putting renewed pressure on the hryvnia just as it was starting to find its footing from a 68-percent slide against the dollar since the start of 2014.

“Without IMF support, we should expect devaluation and social instability,” said Anatoliy Oktysyuk of Kiev’s International Centre for Policy Studies.

“The alternatives (to IMF support) are not even currently being considered because they are all apocalyptic,” Oktysyuk said.

Lawmakers have already shown their resolve by blocking a constitutional change pushed by Poroshenko that the West hoped would end Ukraine’s 21-month separatist conflict by giving limited special status to pro-Russian rebel-run parts of the east.

Analysts believe that deputies’ instinctive desire to keep their jobs and avoid snap elections will keep Yatsenyuk in place and lead only to a minor government shakeup aimed primarily at preserving the current coalition intact.

“If the government fails in Kiev, it will have a direct effect on political and economic support from the West. Ukraine’s many sceptics will gain the upper hand, and its few friends will face a steep uphill struggle,” said Joerg Forbrig of the US-based German Marshall Fund policy research institute.

“Reduced assistance — whether political, financial, administrative or military — will eventually forfeit the modest gains Ukraine has made and expose the country’s many vulnerabilities,” Forbrig said.