You claim to have gotten your propaganda from independent (how could you possibly know that?) local sources. Wow, great. And by what means did you find them, in this media environment in which European governments and big tech are both censoring views that oppose yours?
I've done what checking I can of their funding sources & ownership, most of which is publicly available if you look for it. You're going to tell me that's all a ruse, and that the Western governments secretly own all independent media outlets that happen to not push a Russian narrative, then?
Kolomoisky backed Poroshenko until about 2015, then their relationship soured. Not looking that different. And not governing much different.
Such democracy!
I absolutely adore the fact that you'll post something about... possibly concealing some assets offshore, and insinuate that it delegitimises his electoral mandate (which it doesn't anyway), and ignore the fact that your preferred victor is concealing inordinately more wealth, in inordinately more illegal ways.
In short, though, none of this is actually relevant. You're just pushing the line that since some rich dude bankrolled one candidate and then another later, therefore they're the same government and the vote doesn't count. Which is a ridiculous, simplistic, undemocratic argument, and would be equally applicable (and equally invalid) in every government on the planet. Including the ones you prefer and endorse.
An election is not necessarily democratic.
Indeed. This one was, by all modern standards, free and fair. The greatest imbalance-- spending power-- was in favour of the candidate who lost.
But again: you don't actually
care about democratic credentials. This is a fig leaf. You're endorsing a course of action to dismantle all elections altogether.
This is whataboutism. The democratic legitimacy (or more precisely the lack thereof) of Russian leadership isn't an issue here. It is very much beside the point.
It absolutely is an issue here. When you endlessly bring up the flaws of Ukrainian democracy as an attempt to justify annexation, you're insinuating that those factors delegitimise the right of the Ukrainian government to hold power. You might not say that out loud, but insinuation drips off every post. Meanwhile, you're endorsing capitulation of Ukraine to Russian demands, which include annexation of vast swathes of Ukrainian land. It is indeed very relevant, when you gripe about flaws in Ukrainian democracy, that your preferred alternative is a route which involves millions of those people being delivered into dictatorship with
no democracy at all.
And so you can't trust the basically commonplace things they published about Ukraine..? You're not making sense.
I certainly can't trust the narrative they're pushing, no. What they're publishing is not commonplace.
At the same time, you're happy to dismiss independent outlets such as the Kyiv Independent on the basis of... a conspiracy theory that they're secretly bankrolled by Western governments. You're not making sense.
Ukraine was shelling cities, and both the DPR and LPR are indigenous to Ukraine.
That's quite a convenient catch-22, isn't it! Send your disguised military into another country, set up a puppet gov, and then that other country isn't allowed to act against it or it would be attacking "its own people".
The United States provided military and financial support for Kurdish separatists in Syria. Russia provided military and financial support for Russian separatists in Ukraine. The same reasoning you are using to declare DPR and LPR "Kremlin puppet-states" applies exactly to the Kurds in Syria. So your politics are incoherent or your reasoning is inconsistent. Pick one. Or both if you prefer.
Nope; the analogy is shite. "Providing military and financial support" is--
obviously-- not the deciding factor.
The Kurdish forces existed primarily on their own account, decided their own strategies and aims, and had a long history of doing so. They would, and did, exist entirely separately from US finance. The DPR and LPR did not; would not exist without Russia directly setting them up, and their strategies and aims exist solely as an extension of the Kremlin's regional ambitions. That's what being a "puppet" means. You don't automatically qualify if someone else makes a fucking donation.
And then we have the context, of the Crimea. When Russia did the same shit... and then used the area as a launchpad for attacks on the rest of the country, and ultimately annexation. Huh! So we're just to... trust that they don't do the same thing this time? Even though they've already used DPR and LPR as launching pads for invasion and attempted annexation? A-FUCKING-GAIN?
They were people in Ukraine who saw a leader they elected and supported forced out by an uprising that was legitimized by the United States and which was apparently hostile to Ukraine's Russian minority. One of the more innocuous examples of that is the protest chant "anyone who isn't jumping is a Russian" (they chanted this when they wanted everyone to be jumping... for some reason). One of the less innocuous examples of that is the massacre at Odessa.
Uh-huh, they were those people... in addition to illegally disguised Russian military personnel, using the area to attack mainland Ukraine as the forerunner to invasion and annexation, exactly as they did in Crimea.
www.newsweek.com
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