Image how much better your life would be without Twitter.
You believe yourself to be happier reveling in ignorance?
This is par for the course, and essentially meaningless, from far-right parties and gangs. Its extremely common for them to exaggerate their involvement, "successes" and capabilities in speeches to supporters. They do this all the time. It's a decades-old rhetorical tool to get people whipped up and on side.
We need something a little more substantial than a sales-pitch from a racist thug if we're going to be drawing such sweeping conclusions. Where's the actual, substantive evidence? Because... yeah, all of that is utterly insubstantial with regarding to establishing an actual significant link to NATO.
You don't find it the least bit interesting that Ukrainian Nazis would be playing up a connection
to NATO specifically to begin with? That's a bit weird, but OK. Here are some financial things.
If the US State Department's Victoria Nuland had not said "Fuck the EU," few outsiders at the time would have heard of Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, the man on the other end of her famously bugged telephone call.
ibw21.org
Main takeaway: there were targeted donations to Ukrainian media from various western organizations specifically to promote the Euromaidan and its "anti-corruption" targeting of Yanukovych but not similarly corrupt pro-western politicians. I noticed that several of that article's links are broken... now. Others are not. Various websites seem to be deleting old articles about western involvement in Ukraine. We saw a similar playbook in Brazil deployed against Lula and Rousseff.
Of course, we could utilize a more general type of reasoning and judgment and look to the results of the Euromaidan as measured against its demands. And what would we find?
We are witnessing the establishment of a pro-Western authoritarian regime in Ukraine, where power is concentrated in the hands of the president.
nationalinterest.org
A opinion poll conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology in August 2013 registered a split about the geopolitical choice of Ukrainian citizens. Around 40% supported the European choice and about the same number were in favor of a pro-Russian choice. Six months later, after results of the Maidan, the power came under the full control of a part of the Ukrainian political elite focused on breaking ties with Russia. And to hold onto this power, a full set of anti-democratic practices that have nothing to do with European values was used. Meanwhile, the goals declared at the Maidan—the fight against corruption and the stranglehold of oligarchs—were not only unachieved, but corruption under the authority of the president-oligarch Petro Poroshenko only worsened.
However, one goal of the Maidan was still achieved—Ukraine signed the Association and Free Trade Area Agreement with the EU. As a result of this Agreement only a small part of the lost eastern markets was compensated by an increase in turnover with the EU, and later with China. The process of deindustrialization gained momentum, and the country’s GDP has halved in the first two years after the Maidan (the country’s GDP declined from $ 183,310 billion in 2013 to $ 90,615 billion in 2015, according to the World Bank) By the end of 2020, Ukraine’s GDP totals about $148 billion, which is only 81% of the level of 2013); health care costs have also almost halved (health care costs in the state budget (which is 95% of all health care costs in Ukraine) in 2020 compared to 2013, in dollar terms, decreased from $ 7.6 billion. up to 4.0 billion.
We would find that, quite conspicuously, the only Euromaidan demand to be achieved other than Yanukovych's removal from power was the signing of a trade agreement with Europe. The domination of Ukraine's politics by oligarchs is untouched. Corruption remains rife. Police and judicial reform are absent. Investigation into the killings of protestors never reached a result. The Euromaidan was so successful in delivering democracy that the people chose another candidate largely for not being involved with it-- and then Zelensky's outsider status delivered nothing substantial in terms of political change (which should be no surprise as he was also a servant of Ukrainian oligarchy, specifically the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, before and after his election). Zelensky turned out to deliver just a slightly more subtle form of oligarchy. In that respect we might compare the United States: we may choose freely among a limited selection of bad choices that all will operate in much the same way irrespective of the wishes of the public. Both are managed democracies which is also to say that they are not democracies at all-- obviously.
But to focus more on the point: the one policy change that the west wanted out of the Euromaidan was what the Euromaidan achieved. And basically nothing else. And you want me to believe that the west had nothing to do with this. Despite the various western groups funding various Ukrainian initiatives aimed at privatizing Ukraine's economy and integrating it westward since the Orange revolution ten years earlier, including the media vehicles which kept the Euromaidan protests prominent in the public consciousness and viewed favorably by almost half of the population of Ukraine. It's just a great coincidence that the result included only the stuff the western ruling class cares about.
you're also fine and happy for Russia to literally overthrow its government with force-of-arms.
Ukrainians appear to be divided on whether the Russian invasion is a good or bad thing, so why would I take a position on it? What would be the point other than signalling to my government that it would be acceptable to inch closer to thermonuclear Armagadden or inflict suffering through sanctions? I want neither of these things. Meanwhile you're utterly fine with the Ukrainian regime making war against the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics for eight years-- because a new Ukrainian government without the legitimacy of a constitutional transfer of power but with the legitimacy conferred on it by the endorsement of European and American diplomats and politicians-- claimed those territories.
Naturally, because you are
consistent, you condemned all support for Kurdish anarchists in Syria by the United States and support Bashar al-Assad in maintaining the territorial integrity of Syria under his leadership. Oh, wait, no-- unlike the people who took power as the result of a right-wing coup involving neo-Nazis, Assad is
evil. And
quite unlike the United States, Putin is evil and manipulative; anything that has received Russian support cannot possibly be at the same time an expression of the feelings of the local population. The United States, because it is so
righteous, is free to support whomever it wishes with weapons without any automatic adverse judgment against the recipients.
another
english.kyodonews.net
kotaku.com
