Bloody oath, George. Couldn’t have said it any better
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Ukrainian democracy is vibrant and absurdly messy. I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert on it, but I can give you a few snippets I’ve taken from listening to Ukrainians describe it all.
Svoboda is a very niche party, only getting 2.4% of the vote and winning a single seat in the last parliamentary election. That’s lower than the far right is getting in countries like France and Germany.
When Russia invaded in 2014 a lot of the initial resistance came from already militarised groups, rather than the army. Organised crime groups and far right militias formed the nucleus of resistance in some areas. Imagine if Texas was invaded, the local redneck militias would be the first to head to the fight, but would be a problematic mix. That’s basically what Azov was at the start, with the military pulling it into their structures and clearing out the far right political types about 5 years ago. The current Azov force is a pretty professional and effective combat unit, which has largely moved on from the right wing politics that it formed with.
There’s also some nuance around the history of Ukraine with the German fascists being seen by some as liberators from the Soviet oppressors. It’s ugly and frankly extremely stupid, but part of me understands how this rose in the face of Russian aggression combined with centuries of oppression.
My take is that the right wing stuff is selectively focused on, but isn’t a real force in Ukraine. It’s an interesting story, but plasters over everything good about Ukrainian politics and cultural acceptance. McCain would have attended an event with the whole range of resistance voices, only for a single person at the table to get the focus of the coverage. Russian propaganda efforts have gone overboard to push this narrative and it has done a surprisingly effective job of shifting the coverage.
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Alternative perspectives are fine, but so is objectivism.
Just bc the US is involved in something, doesn’t mean it is evil or that someone is going to get screwed. Yes it has happened, but not every time, not even 50%
The opposite is also true.
And what @Nexta said, lol
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you had me by your second sentence.
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I’d take John Mearsheimer with a metric tonne of salt. I personally have massive disagreements with him on many of his takes. Don’t have the time right now to dig it up, but try a google for “rebuttal of John Mearsheimer Ukraine” or something like that.
Basically, I think he falls too much for Putin’s narrative and puts the blame too much on the victim and bystanders rather than the perpetrator.
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One like is not enough for this post.
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Click through for the article.
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In a very Russian sort of way.
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I don’t think that logic holds. The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, all sovereign nations. I think the reason we call it Ukraine now is that Ukrainians want us to.
Delving into the meaning of Ukraine is quite a journey. Originally meaning borderland, later patriots preferred defining it as bordered land, while Russia called it Little Russia (Malorussia) from the 1700s until the 1920s.
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If you honestly think ‘NATO being close to their borders’ is the cause then yes.
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Also, exactly what a russian bot would say.
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Burn them all.
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Ukraine’s right to self determination is absolutely of utmost importance. And yes, the US should ensure that a nation being attacked is protected. I haven’t stated anything to oppose this. That doesn’t mean that you don’t question the US stirring the pot initially. You have plenty of astute analysts over the years (I’ve given you one here please don’t ask me to go searching others. I can’t be stuffed 
) who have good reason to believe that a more diplomatic and inclusive approach might have worked better in the lead up. Sure, Russia would be opportunistic if anything gave them an excuse to improve their strategic position. But why give them that opening unless you have your own strategic plans in the works?
Let’s face it, the US have a long history of instigating regime change. It’s a successful tactic so why wouldn’t they use it again? Of course it will make you suspicious of their motives if their politicians are hanging out with far right militant groups or simply just giving a ■■■■ about a region when it so conveniently ignores other countries around the world, who are at a disadvantage in a conflict, but has no real bearing on their global strategy, so they ignore it.
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He lost me at “political scientist”.
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Not happy with your selective editing there 
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The US’s history through the Cold War has tarnished their reputation, quite fairly. I suspect that Putin believes the revolution was a CIA plot as he’s originally KGB and thinks of world events through that lens.
Thing is, the idea of America organising the mass revolution dismisses the efforts and sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian people. The CIA doesn’t have a realistic lever to make people take to the streets for months on end. It’s pretty insulting to the people who were killed by the previous corrupt regime.
I’ve been following this for quite a while and I’ve never seen anything that showed the US was actively involved in what transpired. If anything they were distracted by China and other world events and this legitimately snuck up on them. There wasn’t a big prize for the US in all this, the status quo was pretty good for them. It was to the point that the Sate Department and CIA had downsized most of their Russia experts in favour of Middle East and China specialists. All I’ve really seen from them at the time is moral support for democratic values, but nothing of substance that would have impacted the course of events.
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Yeah, I can’t see how the USA really wins out of this war. They would have been just as happy if things remain unchanged.
It was Putin forcefully trying to bring the Ukrainians back into their direct sphere of influence. And tell me, which Ukrainian would want to go back to a Moscow controlled regime after tasting freedom and unity as a nation?
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