KIEV — “The video is funny because it’s so true,” says my Ukrainian teacher, Katrin Khalabuzar, during a recent lesson at a Kiev hipster café.

I see why the video has struck a nerve with her and close to 50,000 other Ukrainians: It shows President Petro Poroshenko promising at various points that a deal to allow Ukrainians to travel to the European Union without visas would be signed in the very near future. First, he says the agreement will come by January 1, 2015. Then by December 2015. Then “no later” than 2016. And so on. It ends with a final and — so far unfulfilled — promise.

For Ukrainians, visa-free travel is an emotional and symbolic subject, holding up the prospect of a tangible achievement from the pro-European revolution three years ago. EU officials have promised the issue will finally be resolved in 2017. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said at the end of December that Ukrainians should receive visa-free status “in a matter of weeks.”

Many here still have their doubts, Katrin among them.

“I understand that it’s a complicated matter, but if you ask me, we’ll never get visa-free travel,” she says, sipping a cup of hot chocolate. Although Kiev fulfilled all requirements set down by the EU, and European officials gave their preliminary green light to the agreement, the European Parliament still hasn’t set a date to give its final approval.

This uncertainty is helping fuel increasing disenchantment with the EU. In addition to the visa-free travel issue, 2016 was a year of many disappointments for Ukrainians in their relations with Brussels.

Now with a resurgent Russia — and a worrying spike in fighting with Moscow-backed insurgents in the country’s east — many are asking if the new year will hold the same, or perhaps even worse.

Unpleasant surprise

To be sure, the majority of Ukrainians still cling to the dream of eventually joining the EU, and they overwhelmingly prefer the bloc to other political groupings like the Russian-led Eurasian Union.

But after the initial euphoria following the revolution, their fervor for the EU has been steadily waning.

“I think Ukrainians are less enthusiastic about the EU, it’s clear,” says Alyona Getmanchuk, the director of Kiev’s Institute of World Policy.“ I wouldn’t call it ‘Europe fatigue,’ but a disappointment among the EU states to deliver on certain issues.”

For Kiev, EU relations in 2016 were a roller coaster. Aside from the ongoing uncertainty over visa-free travel, voters in the Netherlands in April rejected a landmark agreement that would establish closer economic ties between Ukraine and the bloc.

EU officials scrambled to preserve the deal, striking a compromise with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. But this too contained a number of setbacks: The agreement, they said, did not commit the EU to granting Ukraine candidacy for accession, financial support or “an obligation for the Union or its member states to provide collective security guarantees or other military aid.”

Unfortunately, the EU is not ready to accept us as a member, and we’re not ready yet to become a member of the EU — Andriy Artemenko, an opposition politician

Now the Dutch parliament must vote on the amended agreement, adding another note of uncertainty for Ukrainians in 2017.

Whatever the result will be, though, the original referendum results were a wake-up call for Andriy Volkov and Viktoria Bondarenko, two Ukrainians who believed they were fighting for “European values” on Kiev’s Maidan Square during the revolution.

“I thought of [the Netherlands] as a country that helped others, and would especially help Ukraine since so many Dutch died in the MH17 catastrophe,” Volkov says. “It was an unpleasant surprise — I thought they would support us.”

Adding to their unease is a growing movement in European capitals for lifting sanctions and improving ties with Russia, which strikes fear deep in the hearts of many Ukrainians who have looked to Brussels for support since the Kremlin annexed Crimea and covertly supported insurgents in the east.

“We’re the last defense from the Russians — if they come here, nothing will protect the EU further,” says Bondarenko. “It’s in their interest to support Ukraine. If they wait, everything else will cost them later more dearly — economically, politically and maybe militarily.”

Charity at home

As the video of Poroshenko indicates, Ukrainians don’t just blame EU officials. Many feel their own government has failed them.

They say the bloc would be more willing to help if Kiev actually delivered on promises to implement far-reaching reforms and attack endemic corruption.

An online database of officials’ asset declarations was for many the clearest sign of how little has been done. Public servants who had never worked a day outside government were discovered to hold vast amounts of cash and property.

A recent report by the European Commission said Kiev has introduced “unprecedented” reforms — more in the last two years than in the previous years of independence.

But it also said the government must move beyond “passing legislation and setting up institutions” to executing the changes in full.

“Unfortunately, the EU is not ready to accept us as a member, and we’re not ready yet to become a member of the EU,” says Andriy Artemenko, an opposition politician, adding Ukraine must first get its own house in order.

“We shouldn’t be knocking on a closed door, in a place we haven’t even been invited to,” he said.

Publicly, EU officials say their commitment to Ukraine will remain unchanged. "You have many friends here, and I can promise you that you will not be left behind," European Council President Donald Tusk told Poroshenko at an EU-Ukraine summit at the end of November.

Still, a mood of disillusionment hangs over holiday Kiev. Dmitry Zolotko is among those who feels let down. Strolling with his family at one of the many open-air markets that dot the capital — with the scent of mulled wine and grilling kebabs hanging in the air — he feels the EU delivered on its promises in the beginning, but then let the matter drop.

“They fed us breakfast, and then they said the rest will come later,” he says, as market workers in costumes from the movie “Despicable Me” dance nearby. “They said, ‘It will come tomorrow,’ then ‘the day after tomorrow,’ then just, ‘later.’

“If they wanted to do it, they would have delivered on their promises long ago.”