I don't think anyone would disagree that the Ukraine is complex, that it doesn't have significant problems with corruption and elements of the far right. But the presentation from certain sectors of the left are indistinguishable from Kremlin propaganda. And, ironically, have probably been effectively funded and supported by the Kremlin due to its own longstanding form of interference in Western politics.
1)
Let's take this idea of glorifying Nazis. The context here is that many Ukrainians resented what they viewed as occupation by the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Russian Empire, many Ukrainians battled for independence, both proto-states and an anarchist collective. After these were violently suppressed by the Bolsheviks, the next shot that Ukrainians had of independence was alliance with Nazi Germany. Obviously, this is going to taint Ukrainian nationalists of the era - but that's what those nationalists had to work with due to their circumstances.
Plenty of other states have complex relationships here. The Baltic states have similar issues, and Finland also joined in with the Nazis to recover territories stolen by Russia after the Russo-Finnish war. Also, contextually, a lot of great leaders have major flaws, especially when we look back into further history. One might note, for instance, many US Founding Fathers were unrepentant slave owners. And yet few would argue that completely negates everything else they stood for, or requires us to repudiate them in entirety. And yet that is what Russian propaganda and Russian stooges on the Western left would ask of us, because that's a form of complexity and shades of grey inconvenient to them.
2)
Of course the USA "interferes". So does everyone. The BBC broadcasts around the world in large part as a projection of British values, RT does the same for Russia and Al Jazeera for Qatar. Political contacts, human development and media flows in with agendas to win hearts and minds. Let's take Ukraine: a balanced view of the influence flowing into Ukraine would reveal massive Russian efforts at every level - political corruption, media influence, in the end sending government advisors to tell president Yanukovych how to best suppress a protest with brute force, and offering direct military support to ensure his rule.
The tacit message of these left pieces is that whilst The West should stand right back and respect these countries' self-determination by not so much as opening a single think tank that advocates democracy, implicitly Russia is free to run riot. If it is bribing politicians, having pet media magnates to aggressively push pro-Russian policy, that's merely to be passively regretted and maybe one day nice Mr. Putin will develop a conscience and stop. Or he's only doing because we do it (lol). It could kindly be called naive. It becomes a little more uncomfortable when these people go further, attempt to blur lines and present what is mostly routine "hearts and minds" media that is relatively overt and benign (if still self-interested) with alleged shadow campaigns to fund neo-Nazi coups.
* * *
The stupid, misguided, blinkered and hopelessly entrenched sector of the Western left has spent so long railing against the capitalist system that its got itself hopelessly stuck. They are as prime an example as it gets of a rigid, Manichean notion of good and bad - and "we" (The West) are the bad guys. This idea of "oh, it's complicated" is a truism that has the real function of disguising their inability to effectively process the human right abuses and rampant aggression of authoritarian, non-Western state actors opposed to the USA and its allies.
jacobinmag.com
fair.org
