I've found it interesting that nearly every anti-protestor comments about the Ukraine situation here have been Russians (as per their profiles). A solid 75%+ anyway, for the last three threads. Why is that?
Because what Yanukovych is doing is very pro-Russian. In simplest terms Ukraine is facing a choice between Russia and the EU. Russia is obviously not too keen to lose Ukraine, since the Russian government and most Russian people consider Ukraine to be a part of Russia (or at least a Russian territory). The protesters are fighting for a more independent Ukraine, one not dependent on Russia for every political decision, and one that has more connections with the EU (in this case a trade agreement).
I noticed the same trend. If you see someone saying something against the protesters they likely identify as Russian in their profile or have a slavic name. It is unfortunate, since opinions are being formed on HN, and the few anti-Ukrainian comments are making their way to the top.
If you think that the people there are fighting for more connections with EU, you should really read more primary sources. (Also, put basic math together: Tjagnibok, his Svoboda and EU? In this reality?)
They simply do not want to bend over to oligarchs any more, it does not matter whether these oligarchs are leaning to Russia or EU. They are saying GTFO to _both_.
30% of Ukrainians are NOT in favour of the EU treaty, and happen to speak Russian as their first language. Not surprising Russians are not keen Ukraine to get separated from Russia either. But why is that unfortunate?
Also I hope you are not suggesting that opinions should be somehow filtered based on whether a poster has a Russian name.
> 30% of Ukrainians are NOT in favour of the EU treaty, and happen to speak Russian as their first language. Not surprising Russians are not keen Ukraine to get separated from Russia either. But why is that unfortunate?
Correct. I happen to be a Russian-speaking Ukrainian and I am much more in favor of Ukraine being more open to the west and breaking away from Russia, but I know that's not the only opinion. The fact that not everybody agrees is in my opinion unfortunate because Russia has no interest in investing in Ukraine's future.
> Also I hope you are not suggesting that opinions should be somehow filtered based on whether a poster has a Russian name.
Not in the slightest. I am suggesting that people who don't know much about the situation do their own research rather than trusting comments on the several stories that ended up on HN in the past few days. There is a lot of bias here, especially pro-Russian bias. I would like to see people not directly involved with the situation form their own opinions based on facts.
> Russia has no interest in investing in Ukraine's future.
Seems like it does, based on the bailout money it offered. Even then, Russia and (Eastern) Ukraine have strong cultural/historical/etc connections, so these issues are quite sensitive to many people, and should not be seen as an EU vs. "evil Putin" matter. Neither should one blame ordinary Russians for having a different opinion on this.
Him not signing them was pro-Russian. The EU treaty was ready to go, when Yanukovych suddenly turned around and refused to sign it. That was the pro-Russian move.
OK, you already provided clarification for his statement. Now it looks like you're being pedantic for no good reason or just trying to start shit with IgorPartola.
That it was pro-EU while going through the process of getting the treaty ready, but to snub it at the last minute for Putins favour is very very pro-Russian, if you will. Far more so than doing some paperwork, anyway.
Then maybe he's not a puppet but actually an actor who tries to extract bonuses from multiple parties by raising stakes?
I.e. get EU treaty ready to be signed, extract power from Russia based on the fear of this treaty going live. And then try to extract more power from EU based on the fear that Russians are overtaking.
> I've found it interesting that nearly every anti-protestor comments about the Ukraine situation here have been Russians (as per their profiles). A solid 75%+ anyway, for the last three threads. Why is that?
Because they can read primary sources...
Most of the supporters of the protesters know nothing of the situation except what the English-speaking media filters to them, and what some protester writes on a blog (because that wouldn't be biased at all...).
And Russian media is likewise heavily propagandized.
The truth is that it's simply a complex issue about a country with a deep ideological divide which is being pulled on by the two super-powers it's wedged between.
There's a lot of power-play going on here, especially with Putin's desire to have Sochi (the winter games) look good, which is evidenced by things such as the massive discount on natural gas offered by Russia in exchange for not signing the treaty with the EU (which sparked the protests originally.)
That's why Russian media focuses mostly on the fact that the majority of people on the street are extremists (i.e. people who love to fight,) conveniently ignoring the fact that a large amount are also just normal citizens truly representing the movement and a much, much larger amount of people are expressing their support on social media.
> And Russian media is likewise heavily propagandized.
More 'propagandised' than our media? Every single news item we get concerning Russia and Ukraine is filtered through the 'Putin is an evil dictator lens', we get nothing even remotely close to the truth... Source: friends from Russia and Ukraine.
True. But that also means to say certain opinions are flawed because of bias is kind of pointless, isn't it?
what some protester writes on a blog (because that wouldn't be biased at all...)
At least it's first-hand bias. Those people put their lives on the line, literally, so while I agree one shouldn't just take a handful opinions and believe them, I think you can't just easily dismiss them for being protesters, either. It takes a lot of material to come even to a tentative conclusion, but it's possible. Then you'll still be biased but I guess that's the price of being human.
I don't know if I can answer your question, but I lived in eastern Ukraine for two years (yes, I speak fluent Russian), and my frustration with the media and journalism there has sent me on a three year (so far) journey to make everyday people the driving force of journalism instead of governments and corporations.
And please take note, it's impossible to speak for a group of people or boil down what's happening to anything concrete when it's very disparate and unique to each individual. But I'll point out a few trends I've seen.
For some background, eastern Ukraine is very pro-Russian, and was (and is) very pro-Yanukovytch. The majority of the people I talked to pined for the days of the Soviet Union, when bread was cheap, everyone had what they needed, etc. They viewed the fall of the soviet union as a psychological infiltration from the west, and, apart from a short rendezvous to defeat Hitler, the west is still the enemy and full of corrupt capitalist blood suckers (which, to be fair, can be not-too-far from the truth at times). It's hard for most westerners to imagine that many of the major cities in Ukraine have a 30 ft + statue of Lenin or that many of the major streets are named "Lenin" street, but it's not uncommon for me to see poems or images praising Stalin from my Russian Facebook (or Vkontakte) friends. The Soviet Union was the good ol' days, not grouped together with pre-WWII Germany as it often is in the States. Stalin is decidedly not Hitler. I include this information not to say that anti-protest comments come from Soviets/Communists, but the influence of the Soviet Union and how information was relayed still lingers, even today.
When most of the people there, especially the older generations, talked about the media, they would often reference a transmission from Moscow (передача из Москвы) as the only source of reliable information. Think of it as "published in the New York Times." And bear in mind that the New York Times has been just as involved in Propaganda as was Pravda in its heyday.
The battle, in the mind of Russians, is one of information, and of each side trying to deceive the other. Americans look at pro-Communist posters as "propaganda" but at the western side's as simply "promotional posters." Russians see it as an ideological battle being fought with information.
For many Russians this is the same battle being fought. It's not revolutionaries vs. evil dictator, it's east vs. west. It's Russia vs. the Europe/United States. And when a battle of information leads to such sharp contrasts, you defend your side, in a similar way to how Republicans defended George Bush when he did stupid things and Democrats defend Barack Obama when he does stupid things. It's not about the particular circumstance, it's about ideology. You'll notice a common thread of "Well, sometimes Russia sucks, but America sucks sometimes too." Which, again, is completely fair. And again, this is not something that only happens in Russia.
But this leads to trying to sway the facts in favor of one side, and that often leads to gross misinterpretation of what is actually going on. Russia Today and Pravda are state-sponsored PR organizations dressed up as journalistic institutions. When the protests began, according to RT it was "a handful of people" gathered, angry at "a failed trade law," and not the bubbling over of frustration as a completely corrupt President threw his enemies in jail and deepened relations with Putin.
Take, for example, the naked protestor who was mocked by police, photographed, slapped, kicked, and put in a van (graphic video:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSt4kAItj4Q. Many of my Russian friends would tell you he was trying to set himself on fire, the police saved him, took pictures "in memoriam," gave him a few friendly slaps, and let him go. They would leave comments like "Let him burn next time!" or "Be careful, police, you're only giving the terrorists more psychological ammunition!"
So, to answer your question, in the mind of a Russian it's because we're still fighting a war of information, and the west likes to deceive and destroy Russia psychologically. They defend their ideology the same way we defend ours, and sometimes information and facts are left out to dry.
This is a very good summary. Coming from a different angle I can relate to most of these points. The biggest issue is that people there view the USSR as the height of Russia, and pro-Russian Ukrainians are glorifying what Ukraine was as a country when it was a part of the USSR. Remember, the propaganda machine was incredibly strong in the USSR. People were constantly told that the USSR is the greatest country in the world (much more so than in the US being told about exceptionalism). People there grew up on the idea that communism was the one true way.
Another point: most people currently in power in Russia and Ukraine were either members of or had strong connections to the communist party. You can change the form of government all you want but if you don't change who is in power can you really expect different results?
Finally, it is extremely important for Ukraine to break away from Russia and define its own identity. It is hard to provide an adequate metaphor for what 70 years of communism did to Ukraine as a country and Ukrainians as a people. As one example, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor. If Ukraine was to give in and be absorbed by Russia, the Ukrainian identity would be destroyed. I do not see that kind of ambition coming from the EU, which is why I am in favor of more close relationships with the west.
What is the Ukrainian "identity"? Here is a map of the territory of Ukraine acquired by Czars or Soviet leaders: http://i.imgur.com/LAc1emR.jpg.
And before the USSR it was part of the Russian Empire. Both Slavic peoples have a close and often intangible history, as far back as Kievan Rus' and the principality of Kiev.
As for myself, my grandfather was a Ukrainian with the surname Kozak, while my grandmother was a Russian by the name Svistelnikov. All the relatives I know were born in Ukraine, including those pre-dating the October revolution.
Furthermore, you mention Holodomor- yet this was allegedly the fault of Stalin, head of the SOVIET state. Are you implying Stalin didn't kill Russians? That Russians somehow benefited from Ukrainian misery? Or, that Russians also didn't starve during those difficult times?
You are making my point. Ukraine has existed as a country for a very long time. It has been fought over and divided by neighboring countries for most of its existence. I am saying that it's time for Ukrainians to find, define, and defend their identity.
> Are you implying Stalin didn't kill Russians? That Russians somehow benefited from Ukrainian misery? Or, that Russians also didn't starve during those difficult times?
He did kill a fair share of them, but yes that is exactly what I am saying. Stalin wanted to assimilate the rest of the soviet republics into one homogenized Russian-based people. Holodomor was a part of it. Re-read the Wikipedia article and the primary sources.
Re. Stalin: Let's not re-write history. USSR was Russia and Russia was USSR. No other country really mattered under Stalin and it was the Russian way or the highway.
>Ukraine has existed as a country for a very long time. It has been fought over and divided by neighboring countries for most of its existence. I am saying that it's time for Ukrainians to find, define, and defend their identity.
I ask, what is its identity? Because historically it has close ties to Russia and a shared history with all Slavic people. In fact, how do we define what Ukraine was over history, since if that image I posted is correct most of it's territory was given by the Russian empire or Soviet leaders. Furthermore, Kiev was just as much the birthplace of Russia as Ukraine- current Russia and Ukraine were once indistinguishable as the principality of Kiev: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rus_de_Kiev_en_1237.png
>Stalin wanted to assimilate the rest of the soviet republics into one homogenized Russian-based people. Holodomor was a part of it. Re-read the Wikipedia article and the primary sources.
Re. Stalin: Let's not re-write history. USSR was Russia and Russia was USSR. No other country really mattered under Stalin and it was the Russian way or the highway.
Perhaps I am not familiar enough with it. Nonetheless, interesting how the hundreds of years of years of shared history should be disregarded because of the actions of one man who was ethnically neither Ukrainian nor Russian, and yet, according to you, killed Ukrainians in the name of Russians.
> I ask, what is its identity? Because historically it has close ties to Russia and a shared history with all Slavic people...
This is exactly the patronizing point of view that the Russians take of the Ukrainian identity: that it does not exist or that Ukraine is simply a part of Russia. This is exactly what the protesters are fighting. The fact that there are protesters on the streets right now is proof enough.
Moreover, any cultural identity does not exist in a vacuum. By your logic we can argue that the US has no identity of its own and is still just a breakaway British colony that is due to join the UK any day now. Just because one country invades another and subjugates its people for a period of time, does not make the occupied country a part of the occupying country. By that logic Poland has nearly as much claim on Ukraine as Russia does. Or, and I really like this one, Russia is just a part of Ukraine, and should immediately surrender all of its territories to Kiev immediately. After all Kiev was where Russia came from when Moscow was an insignificant fortress in the north.
>This is exactly the patronizing point of view that the Russians take of the Ukrainian identity: that it does not exist or that Ukraine is simply a part of Russia.
Personally I believe Ukraine and Russia should be equals in whatever future association they make. I see nothing wrong with saying Russia should equally be a part of Ukraine. It is just easier to imagine the opposite because Russia is bigger.
>This is exactly what the protesters are fighting. The fact that there are protesters on the streets right now is proof enough.
There are all sorts of protesters out there, and I have read that most of them are protesting corruption, not the trade agreement or East vs West. Anyway, let the elections decide.
>Just because one country invades another and subjugates its people for a period of time, does not make the occupied country a part of the occupying country.
Except Ukraine willingly joined the Russian empire in 1654. And again, many Ukrainians would like closer ties to Russia.
>Moreover, any cultural identity does not exist in a vacuum. By your logic we can argue that the US has no identity of its own and is still just a breakaway British colony that is due to join the UK any day now.
The similarity is that the US and the UK have very strong relations, and a difference is that many hundreds of years have elapsed since the American revolution. But, similarly, during the American revolution, there were royalists, and a foreign power (the French) did intervene to defeat the British. The point is that many Ukrainians would like closer ties to Russia, particularly those in the East.
Also, why pick the US when you can pick Canada- the Queen still comes by to visit, we have a governor-general, we are part of the commonwealth, and so on. A lot of people here feel close ties to the UK because of their British heritage.
Personally I believe Mexico and the US should be equals in whatever future association they make. I see nothing wrong with saying the US should equally be a part of Mexico. It is just easier to imagine the opposite because the US is bigger.
Close relationships? Sure. Visa-free entry? Sure. Trade agreement? Sure. Exclusive one way relationship and political meddling in another country's dealings? No way.
>Personally I believe Mexico and the US should be equals in whatever future association they make. I see nothing wrong with saying the US should equally be a part of Mexico. It is just easier to imagine the opposite because the US is bigger.
What are you trying to say? Mexico and the United states are very different countries with distinct cultures and ethnicities. Ukraine and Russia are both Slavic nations with very similar cultures, traditions, languages, and histories, and I mean in many ways they are indistinguishable. Now, this doesn't mean I'm saying "Ukraine doesn't exist, or is a part of Russia"; I could equally be saying Russia doesn't exist and is a part of Ukraine.
>Close relationships? Sure. Visa-free entry? Sure. Trade agreement? Sure. Exclusive one way relationship and political meddling in another country's dealings? No way.
I disagree how? I don't think that Ukraine should be assimilated into Russia, or that Russian should be taught in Ukrainian schools even. I just think that the ties between Russia and Ukraine should be preserved, especially because so many people have roots in both countries.
In that case Russia should have no problem with Ukraine entering into a trade agreement with the EU or even joining the EU as a member. It should also have no issue with Ukraine having its own democratic elections that do not include a puppet from Moscow.
> Ukraine has existed as a country for a very long time.
Except it really hasn't. During the Kievan Rus era, there was no distinction between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine was the frontier region (hence the etymology of the word from old Slavic), and it's been contested by Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Austro-Hungary, Tatars, etc... After centuries changing hands, Ukraine was eventually held by the Russian empire (who had by then moved its capital from Kyiv to Moscow), and Ukraine only became a country briefly from 1917 to 1920. Then again in 1991.
To say its been a country 'for a very long time' is patently false, and revisionist history.
> USSR was Russia and Russia was USSR.
This is again false. When they murdered the royal family, suppressed the Church, and murdered millions of Russians, they ceased to represent the Russian people. They were a cabal of communists who oppressed Russians and many other peoples.
So that's one way to look at it. Here's another. It's Ukraine vs Russia. Ukraine has a culture, a history, a language. That culture, history, and language is UKRAINIAN. Not Russian.
During the USSR, Ukrainian was essentially taught as a second language. Russian was more cosmopolitan. That's like having English taught as a primary language in Paris.
After the fall of the USSR, Ukraine started clawing back its own heritage and of course, there is friction. You're witnessing that friction.
I agree with you. My comment was from the point of view of a Russian who was posting anti-protestor comments. They would see Ukraine as one of the former Soviet republics trying to westernize itself, not as a country trying to return to autonomy.
And to be fair, there is some truth in framing the debate as Russia vs. Europe/US (as opposed to Russia vs. Ukraine). Despite the fact that signing a trade agreement with the EU is hardly "joining the west," Ukraine will go bankrupt if they're not bailed out or supported by either the West or Russia. Selecting one or the other implies alliance and political (if not economic) debt.
> Ukraine has a culture, a history, a language. That culture, history, and language is UKRAINIAN. Not Russian.
> After the fall of the USSR, Ukraine started clawing back its own heritage and of course, there is friction. You're witnessing that friction.
<irony>So Russians don't want Ukrainians to speak the Ukrainian language and to have their own culture, now? That's really evil. I didn't know that.</irony>
If by good you mean not being able to provide food for your family during difficult times, not being able to buy common household appliances even though you and your wife work full-time skilled jobs, not having access to world music or culture because the west is "bad", being randomly stopped and harassed by police until you paid them off, being denied entry to certain schools and universities because of your race and/or religion.
Sure, there might have been people that had it "ok." But my family, all of my relatives, all my Russian friends that immigrated from the USSR/Russia (except for a few die hard Russian patriots that wouldn't admit any fault in Russia even if it put their family to death) all have the same, general opinion of it.
And yes, there were the lazy drunks that loved the fact that they could drink on the job all day, not do a single thing, and never get fired. The incompetent idiots that got jobs in positions they had no clue about, I'm sure they loved their job security. But for the average hardworking people that were trying to create the best life for their families, it was pretty shitty.
On the other hand, my parents and grandparents were engineers who worked hard, had a dacha and a boat, went to music school and went on vacations to Crimea, Moscow, and so on- now my father works several hundred km to support our family while the factory my mother worked at went bankrupt because they cannot compete with third-world labour, but in the process she developed a tumor and other health issues from working with chemicals and she cannot afford to get any training for a different job. Also, unemployment benefits will cease soon.
Keep in mind I said many, not all, but based on the conversations I had with older people in the Czech Republic when I lived there for a year I'm pretty sure it's a real thing.
It's also good to keep in mind that when you get most of your information from people who chose to leave the selection bias is rather high/peculiar.
> This seems to be the thing most Westerners find hard to grasp. For many people communism was good.
This is naive. Please don't pay too much attention to those who weren't there.
It was heaven for Russians, because a nation that has been historically at the bottom of the ladder, got to play in the big leagues. Who cares if your standard of living sucks? It always sucked.
> If you didn't want too much you would get everything you wanted without struggle, which for many was heaven.
If you want to find out how Communism gives "to those according to need and from those according to ability", then I urge you to visit North Korea.
I assure you, that is exactly how communism worked in the past and continues to work today.
> It was heaven for Russians, because a nation that has been historically at the bottom of the ladder, got to play in the big leagues. Who cares if your standard of living sucks? It always sucked.
For anyone interested what Ukrainian nationalists have to do with this, this is an example of their thinking.
Yet Cromwell exterminated a fifth of the Irish population, and Churchill allowed millions of Indians to starve in the '40s while part of the British empire. How come you don't put things in perspective? Nor was Hitler a communist- and the history of American military and economic intervention has left millions more dead. Yet "Holodomor" is an act apparently exclusive to communism, and not only due estimates of death toll vary greatly, but the notion that it was man made or a genocide are heavily disputed.
Put things in perspective? Because other societies and governments are equally horrible, Communism isn't so bad? What kind of argument is this? I can point to a lot more examples.
There are many more of course, too numerous to put here. Mass starvation and death is not the exclusive domain of communism for sure, but communist societies of the past sure seem to have been prone to it. The "Communist" countries today that aren't complete shit-holes (like China and Vietnam) are the ones that have moved away from strict command economies and allowed markets to form.
As for Holodomor, I was just pointing that out because we're talking about Ukraine here. Whether through malicious intent or incompetence and mismanagement, Stalin's regime was still responsible for countless needless deaths.
The point is that these things are faults of leaders, not necessarily ideologies, because you find them in every system. Do you want me to point you to hundreds of wikipedia links for atrocities committed by non-communist governments?
Furthermore, socialism is inevitable. Just look at the world today- distinctly more socialist than it was 100 years ago.
My parents have lived in both communism and capitalism and believe a mixed society is probably the best.
> The point is that these things are faults of leaders
The leaders were driven by the ideology. Their actions were driven by a desire to achieve their vision of a communist utopia. People went along with these plans because the ideology promised them a better life. By your logic, was National Socialism not evil because the Holocaust was the fault of Hitler and his Lieutenants?
> Just look at the world today- distinctly more socialist than it was 100 years ago.
I'm not criticizing socialism, I am specifically criticizing hard-line communism as practiced in the past by the Soviet Union and in the present by nations like North Korea and Cuba. The fact that the Soviet Union collapsed and the People's Republic of China moved away from orthodox communism is an indication of how valid that ideology was.
> My parents have lived in both communism and capitalism and believe a mixed society is probably the best
And that's what we have today in most western countries. In fact, that's what we had in the west even during the Cold War. Again, not saying that any semblance of socialism is inherently bad. I'm saying that orthodox communism has, does, and will always, lead to suffering for the general population.
People who lived and remember holodomor are no longer alive. The people who voted for Yanukovich grew up in the 70's and 80' - at the peak of communism civilization.
I take it as hatred of oligarchs. It is just coincidence, that none of them is Ukrainian. I think that if Ukrainian had a chance to become oligarch, he would use it.
Officially, 180-something, but they voted by show of hand (because the opposition prevented proper voting procedures), which is illegitimate, and a blatant violation of protocol. Moreover, photographs prove that most government deputies didn't event bother to raise their hands, and the parliamentary speaker simply came up with a number.
This hasn't been about "pro-EU protests" for a long time now. There were these protests, end of November 2013, they were brutally attacked and made illegal, and then the really big protests began, against the police brutality and the corrupt regime.
The anti-protest laws were made (they didn't even bother to count the votes) 1.5 months into that. To suggest they were created to allow signing the treaty means you're very lost indeed.
Because that violent dispersal of peaceful protests (pro EU treaty) were the straw that broke the camels back, and from then on one thing lead to another.
Ok. By "these laws" i meant not exactly the list of laws by 16 Nov, you are right in this.
The idea is that protesters fight against EU-like laws from one side and want to join the EU from another (read the source with google translate). Looks like double standards for me.
Why do you call laws that exist in specific EU countries, often for historic reasons, "EU-like"?
Some EU states might have all kinds of weird laws, like, you should not be rude to King, or that you should not blasphemy against Anglican faith - but how does all that automatically apply to Ukraine?
Unless you have a case of uniform and mandatory all-EU anti-protest laws that are rejected by Ukrainians, you have a shaky position here.
In many EU countries, such as Germany for example, it is illegal to wear helmets or even any gear which might hide your identity like ski masks, large hats etc.
Therefore, it's kind of ironic, as those laws are "standard" in many EU countries. Nevertheless, people even in those countries now become very upset about the Ukraine banning headgear......
In many EU countries, such as Germany for example, it is illegal to wear helmets or even any gear which might hide your identity like ski masks, large hats etc.
Are any of those laws EU-mandated though? Because while the bulk of legislation in member states comes from Brussels, and there is a lot of harmonization effort, it is mostly focused on economic regulations.
German parliament passing a law carries no obligation for other countries to adopt similar legislation.
It's ironc as much as the fact that in many EU countries, when people protest, they don't get brutally beaten, if they're lucky, or kidnapped, tortured and thrown into the fields, possibly dead, when they're not, or that doctors and journalists are not being shot and killed, and so on.
Every country has a set of N (of M, M >> N) anti-protest laws. A random subset of M. Where M is every anti-protest law present in any country.
Trying to introduce new laws so N becomes N1 > N is stifling of freedom and should be fought.
Does not matter that laws in (N1 - N) present in other countries (in M). Other countries just have different laws. They lack some anti-protest laws you already have! Or, they explicitly state some freedoms your country just does not have.
In copying repressive laws from them (whithout removing repressive laws they do not have and/or adding freedoms), you're not becoming closer to them, you become closer to North Korea (which probably has its Nnk = M).
Or much simpler explanation: "the west" uses double standard, uses anything at hand to scandlize opponent and does not realize, that the same reason is valid at home.
That's fine, if it was the point of protesting Ukrainians. They are protesting something else (corruption of all politicians, including Janukovic and Klicko).
The main force using this talking point is the _US and EU press_.
If you actually read the laws that Yanukovych passed, they were hardly extreme, and are close to what is in place in most Western countries already.
Limits on shutting down infrastructure, arming yourself in a protest, wearing body armour, inciting violence, and setting up tents in public areas... Things which are illegal everywhere in the West.
But everyone gets their news through a filter here, no one reads primary sources, no one reads Ukrainian or Russian or even bothers with translation tools...
Edit - love the downvotes for suggesting people look into primary sources. Guess people love being sheep.
Yeah, because 2 years in prison is a completely reasonable sentence for researching the background of police officers or politicians, i.e. looking into corruption. And 10 years of prison for being at a protest is hardly extreme as well. Or prison for wearing head protection when the police is shooting at you.
> Yeah, because 2 years in prison is a completely reasonable sentence for researching the background of police officers or politicians, i.e. looking into corruption. And 10 years of prison for being at a protest is hardly extreme as well. Or prison for wearing head protection when the police is shooting at you.
Please stop trolling. There are always places where laws are worse than somewhere else. Just because an unjust law exists somewhere else in the world does not make it less unjust.
Again, these laws are unjust everywhere. Also remember that Ukraine does not have "Supreme Court". If the government passes a law that is unjust (talking about the EU treating now), the people have a mandate to protest. That is the checks and balances system at play there. Making protests illegal there means that you remove one of the main checks.
Revolution always carries consequences. Inciting it over every 'unjust' law isn't necessarily worthwhile... It's not right to use Ukraine as a proxy battle without consisting the consequences for the Ukrainian people...
These laws are irrelevant to the situation. The protest tarted because Yanukovic refused to sign economic treaty with EU and instead accepted money from Russia. And that was not the whole reason either, it was just last drop in the glass of patience. The corruption is the core reason, and people want to join EU in hopes that EU will help reduce the corruption.
Janukovic asked EU first, they sent him home ("the problem with Ukrainian financing is your own, we don't care"). Then he asked Russia for a loan and they said yes.
Yanukovych had requested whopping $160 bln. And just guess where a large part of this sum would go.
So his requirement looked like extortion, moreover, after a little shock I realized that this money meant "You give me 160 billions, I sell you Ukraine and you can do anything you want there".
Would you like to know more? There's more. But I guess you could always say that there is no context, or that these are just isolated incidents not sanctioned from above, so I'm not sure if I should bother posting more. But I have been following this for like a week, reading and watching a lot, and I would say the situation is actually worse than many people in the west are aware of.
Oh, I'm under no delusion about police brutality in the west, here in Germany as well. Doesn't make it okay though, or unworthy of resisting and trying to get things changed.
But should we incite revolution in a country, making things much worse in the process, destroying economies and the unity of a country for such a reason?
Revolution always makes things worse before they get better...
Unity could be restored by the rest of the country joining them, the revolution could be ended by the president resigning.
Revolution always makes things worse before they get better...
Yes, sadly. And the outcome of this is unclear. But I can't blame them for trying. As they say, better an end with terror than terror without end. They are risking their lives not just out of sheer boredom or greed, but because they have been pushed into a corner and saw no other way out.
All I have to say is that there's a reason Yushchenko was voted out of office so unceremoniously.... The rest of the country won't join the protests because they don't want a government consisting of Fatherland and Svoboda...
> Over the last days not only the far right confront the government, but also people of more moderate views. And they constitute the majority of the protesters. Many of them are indifferent to nationalism or negatively predisposed to it. Many of them don’t support integration into the EU. People go into the streets to protest against police violence. And a significant part of them is unenthusiastic or even skeptical about the clashes in the Grushevskogo street. Often one can hear that right radicals are a “Trojan horse” of Yanukovych and special services, designed to discredit the protest. Certainly there would be many more Kievites participating in the protests if there was a way to take those idiots useful to the government out of the streets.
