• Meanwhile, Ukraine lost its sovereignty back in 2014 when a democratically elected government was overthrown in a western backed coup. Painting this as Ukraine freely choosing to associate with NATO is the height of intellectual dishonesty.

    You are ignorant of the facts. The democratically elected Ukrainian parliament adopted a treaty for closer association with the EU, which Yanukovich tried to block. After sending snipers to fire at protestors against his deeply unpopular decision, the Ukrainian parliament voted by a large majority to remove Yanukovich from his post. There is no evidence of Western involvement here, and the only nation that spoke of a “coup” was Russia, as Putin lost his ally in Yanukovich. All of this happened through democratic votes, by a democratically elected governing body.

    And one of the first things the interim government did? Hold new elections. How did Putin respond? By sending in troops and illegally occupying Crimea. And in Donetsk and Luhansk the pro-Russian separatists tried everything to disrupt the elections and deprive the Ukrainians there of their democratic right to vote.

    Had Yanukovich decided not to send in snipers, the protests would have happened without bloodshed. Had Putin decided not to send in troops, there would not have been bloodshed. Every single time the decision to use violence was taken by Putin or one of his allies.

    You’re an ideologue regurgitating propaganda you’ve memorized

    Rich coming from someone who only regurgitates Russian talking points verbatim.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      No, I’m not ignorant of any facts. And this has been extensively documented in western media. https://archive.ph/BAxYc

      The regime that got in power started doing these kinds of things to people of Donbas, as was openly reported by CNN at the time.

      Now, let’s take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here’s the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:

      here’s how the election in 2004 went:

      this is the 2010 election:

      As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:

      Turns out that the civil war started exactly where the current line of contact is, and it started precisely because the nationalist regime the west installed started doing ethnic cleansing.

      Rich coming from someone who only regurgitates Russian talking points verbatim.

      Ah yes, Russian talking points as reported by western media. You’re an utter clown.