That doesn't explain why Russia chose to make an explicit claim to the entire Zap and Kherson oblasts. I still stand by my opinion that Russia would absolutely love to take Kharkiv, Odessa and Dnipro if they were on the table. Will they expend as much time and energy on capturing those as they do for the Donbas? Perhaps not. But this notion that Putin only ever wanted the Donbas and Crimea doesn't add up. And note that if Russia keeps Zap or Kherson in a peace deal, they would control the Dnipro river and be able to shut off most of rump-Ukraine's heavy industry at will. That alone is a strong reason for them to want to advance beyond the Donbas and toward the river.




We've had this discussion so many times already.

Pre-maidan, the most recent parliamentary election had produced a pro-EU majority, and pro-Western candidates had received a majority of the vote in the 2010 presidential election. Yanukovych was only able to win on a plurality because the pro-Western side was split between the braid girl and an ultranationalist from Lviv. And Yanukovych had only been able to eke out his narrow win because he had explicitly promised that he wouldn't stand in the way of closer ties with the EU.

https://i.imgur.com/kzZoN3B.jpeg

Btw, in 2004, the pro-EU side had already achieved a majority. Their leading candidate was poisoned with dioxin, but won anyway...



The whole crux in 2013/14 was that there WAS a pro-EU majority, albeit a razor thin one, but the eastern provinces were vehemently opposed. It was this volatile environment which exploded when Yanukovych broke his prior promise and intervened at the 11th hour to stop the EU-Ukraine association agreement. We can squabble about democratic process, whether the Euromaidan was a coup or a revolution and so on and forth - but don't claim that pro-EU sentiment was a decidedly minority position.

I think what we can all agree on is that with the benefit of hindsight, Ukraine should have gone for some sort of "amicable national divorce" similar to the CSSR.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 24 2026 12:49pm

By the time Ukraine enters the EU, it will look something like this:

Well I think he wanted everything east of the dnipro and set his sights lower. That's the traditional boundary that defines ethno-political Ukraine. Slavs to the east, cossacks to the west. Kharkiv and Zaporhizhia are native russian speaking, slavic ethnicity, voted for yanukovych, etc etc you can divvy up the various maps. Putin said in his earlier speeches he wanted everything up to the dnipro, but they aren't advancing on kharkiv this year or next at this rate.



A 49-46 plurality is still the democratic will of the people. The social contract of a democracy is that people have to obey by the outcomes of their elections. If the vote doesn't go the way they want, and they overrun their capitol by force of arms, put in a new regime, and that regime suspends elections entirely and ends the pretense of democratic voting- its plainly not a democracy.
Now Ukraine could have entered into some kind of mediated separation like south sudan or somaliland. They could have voted for a pro-EU candidate in elections that would have been held just years later, maybe averting a decade of war. But the fact was: It was a minority position who had lost the election and instead overthrew the government in a color revolution. It was a suspension of democracy and the will of the majority being suppressed by a violent minority backed by a foreign power. It wasn't Russia intervening to take control of the Ukrainian government in 2014, it was America, and we've got the state department on tape micromanaging it.


One of the central premises of all talks to the west has been a dogmatic, parochial assertion that we represent the rules based order and democracy and are the sole arbiters of geopolitical legitimacy. We saw that in the phone call between Putin and Macron in feburary 2022, when Macron just blithely refused to recognize even the most basic level of self-determination or representation for the separatist regions. Even though their government had been overthrown by literal neo-nazis and all the people of the east disenfranchised, and they voted overwhelmingly for separation in a democratic referendum, Macron stated:



This is the basis of all our dysfunction. We are full of shit, and refuse to acknowledge it, and the haughtiness of our positions are matched only by our inability to enforce them.

You're conveniently leaving out the fact that the Euromaidan protests started out peacefully and that it was Yanukovych's side which escalated by using force against the protesters, until the protesters no longer took it.




You're conventiently focusing solely on the presidential election and leaving out the parliamentary election, during which pro-EU had been the majority position.




Neither a majority of Ukrainians nor a majority of the voters in either the parliamentary or the presidential election had supported a strict pro-Russian position, so I really struggle to understand how you can keep talking about "the will of the majority being suppressed". And no shit, Russia didn't intervene to take control of the Ukrainian government in 2014 since they already controlled one of its branches. And yes, Russia did intervene in Ukrainian politics when they instructed Yanukovych to block the EU association agreement at the last minute and in a clear violation of all his campaign promises.




It's really funny how you frame the sham referendums in the separatist regions as "democratic" after harping so strongly on process issues with the Euromaidan. Nobody except for Russia itself has acknowledged these referendums, they were accompanied by a campaign of voter suppression and intimidation and clearly not free and fair. The exact same issues which you use to consider the Euromaidan illegitimate.

Our color revolution that overthrows a democracy is legitimate, but their referendums by a disenfranchised region who had their government seized from under them is a sham? See that's precisely why the western position is so hypocritically dogmatic. You leave out that for the first time Ukraine had a legitimate democracy recognized by both east and west, it was toppled by a violent revolution led by neo-nazis. One that the legitimate government had an obligation to put down by force to maintain the state. And when you're looking for which party is the instigator, it doesn't help when the guys in Maidan square were literally handing out copies of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It puts it beyond the reach of these false equivalencies or finger pointing of 'who started it'. If Ukrainians yearned for a pro-EU head of state, they had elections coming up just a couple years later and plenty of levers of democratic process to exercise. They didn't. They burned the loyalists alive in the trade union tower and started a civil war.

Do you seriously doubt that the ethnic Russian majority regions that had been fighting that bitter civil war were willing to vote for separation and annexation? Vladimir Putin learned a long time ago that you don't need to rig elections if you're going to win anyway, like we saw with Hilary Clinton sticking her nose into Russian politics. Mind you, a lesson she should have learned before her own primary in 2016 lmao. But really, its like doubting that democrats won in elections held in the confederate states of America in 1862 after secession.

Euromaidan was illegitimate because a democracy that all sides recognized as legitimate was overthrown by a coup d'etat led by a neo-nazi vanguard, throwing out the winner of the last election held by a united democracy and disenfranchising half a country. The referendums were as legitimate as they could have been, in they laid jursidiction over the will only of the people voting in the election, the separatist regions. West Ukraine continued to lay claim to East Ukraine despite never holding it for a single day, and continues to do so to this day. A revolution founded by violent force can only control lands they claim by violent force. And if we're going to abandon moral pretenses, at least we must acknowledge the truth of de facto rule of a land by those with force to hold it. If the west ukrainian revolutionaries had forced the slavs onto the island of formosa I'd call them nationalist ukraine today and maybe a nationalist ukrainian bakery would open up in the mall.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jul 24 2026 02:06pm