Shows what little you know of the rest of the world. I don’t remember the USA and Australia leaving Brexit.
In a decent world, with a decent government this wouldn't have happened, though. Or are all these people who need to use food banks, like nurses for example, simply useless mouths to feed in your opinion?
There has been a civil war in Ukraine since 2014.
This war was caused by the overthrow of the legimate government of Ukraine by extreme nationalists
Funny, that, and there was me (and many others, quite a few of them in Ukraine) thinking it was because the Ukrainian government, having chosen to go with the EU aid package, rather than the Russian one, had had the will of the people suborned by the Russian-backed president, Victor Yanukovych, who opted to sign a deal with... Russia. So people protested (the Euromaidan protests, which were initially relatively peaceful). The protesters opposed what they saw as widespread
government corruption, abuse of power and violation of
human rights by Yanukovych and his Azarov government. Incidentally, Yanukovych was named by Transparency International as the top example of corruption in the world at the time. So, just how legitimate is a government where a corrupt president defies his own parliament? Ultimately the government tried to disperse the protester violently on
30th November, 2013 which eventually led to a period referred to as the Revolution of Dignity during which protests increased and violence by the police towards largely unarmed protesters escalated. Then the government introduced severe anti-protest laws (sound familiar?) and the clashes between police and protesters became deadly - ultimately 100 protesters and 13 police died. In February 2014 Yanukovych and a number of pro-Russian MPs fled, and at that point Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and fomented unrest in the Donbas which led to an 8 year civil war.
But you and I have had this conversation before and you are still toeing the Kremlin line, comrade. Why?
Russia has interfered with the modern Ukrainian state from the very beginning and from well before the departure of Yanukovych; another example from 2004: Russia attempted to poison one of the two presidential candidates, Victor Yushenko, with dioxin (TCCD). He was campaigning against the Kremlin's man, Victor Yanukovych (does that name sound familiar, comrade?). After the vote there were suspicions of major voting fraud as Yanukovych, who was far from the favourite, won decisively. This caused widespread protests (the so-called Orange Revolution), and led to the matter being referred to the Ukrainian Supreme Court which found that the poll had been fraudulent and called for the runoff election to be repeated. Yushchenko won in the rerun by 52% to 44%,
BTW this is Victor Yushenko a few years after the poisoning attempt - the pock marked skin is a direct result of TCCD poisoning:
So far from the war being caused by the overthrow of a legitimate government, the war was started by Russia, as a stepping stone to Putin creating his "Greater Russia" (have I heard something similar to this in the past, maybe "Greater Germany"?) - and it was a corrupt and unprincipled Ukrainian president, who has since been tried and found guilty of treason, who was in the wrong. Unless, of course, you happen to believe in Putin's peculiarly warped view of history and truth
It is interesting that while the Ukranian government was killing Russian speakers in the easten Ukraine, the Western media didn't show much interest, it was only when Putin intervened that they sat up an took notice
Really? Then what language does Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president speak? Russian, isn't it? What language do they speak in Odessa? According to a Ukrainian lady my missus knows, Russian is more prevalent than Ukrainian, as it is in many larger cities, such as Kyiv. I think you need to reexamine what you think you know about this conflict and stop just parroting the Kremlin line every time you say anything. The conflict started because Putin had a malleable president in Ukraine who he more or less controlled. There is evidence that his election was bought, in the same way that Putin was responsible in no small part for the election of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. But the parliament and the people called his bluff and he then ran - at which point Putin annexed Crimea and started pumping money and war materials into the Donbas (see above). And at that point you had Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians as well as Russian-speaking Ukrainians fighting Russian-backed "separatists", and in the course of it using a Russian anti-aircraft battery (no small piece of kit) to shoot down a Malaysian airliner. Not the sort of kit a raggy-arsed bunch of separatists would have, now, is it? This was NEVER a war about an oppressed Russian minority - that particular piece of propaganda is pure Kremlin double-speak - it is a war about Russian desires to reclaim what they regard as their rightful territory, including the Baltic states, regardless of the fact that a lot of the people in the areas Russian claims DON'T WANT THE RUSSIANS BACK
Just because most people in the UK don't have a grip on Ukrainian history, particularly modern Ukrainian history, don't assume that we are all without any knowledge of it.
And for those who are a bit xenophobic, this comes from mixing with Ukrainians - and the ones I know are all primarily Russian speakers and yet detest Putin and what he is trying to do to their country - but those Ukrainian surnames I still find hellishly confusing (so apologies for any spelling mistakes)
Edit: If I have to have this "discussion" with Vinty one more time I swear I'll be asking the mods to make this post into a sticky...
www.bloomberg.com
www.debatingeurope.eu
www.trusselltrust.org
