Quote (Ashirgo @ Nov 19 2024 02:56pm)
A quick fact check shows that the pro-Western Yulia Tymoshenko got 46% of the popular vote in the 2nd round of the elections, so it's by no means a "minority group".
Also, in early 2013 their parliament voted 315 vs 34 to continue down the EU path. This doesn't look like a minority to me.
And Yanukovych got 50% of the vote. 50% > 46%. That is what it means to be a minority in a democracy.
In a republic, there are rules governing how elections work, who takes power and how people are represented. If you refuse to abide by those rules and throw out the results of elections and take power by force, you aren't a democracy, you're a dictatorship.
This is all very basic and there's no argument to be had here. There is nothing you can say that is going to magically change the fact that the Ukrainian democracy was overthrown by an armed revolution, that a US puppet government was set up in its place and the majority of the country disenfranchised and persecuted. The best argument you can make is an appeal to realpolitik, to admit that the US backed a color revolution to overthrow a country in Russia's sphere of influence and seize it by force- and that we should support it anyway. Out of cynical self-interest, not some highminded bullshittery about democratic ideals. But even that argument fell apart before this war even began. Because it was entirely predictable that Russia would invest the force necessary to reclaim their influence in Ukraine, and the US/EU would be unwilling to act. And it is as simple as that. You can only claim what you can hold.