• ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    To be fair, they’re (understandably) under martial law which has been extended in 90 day increments since 2022 with parliamentary approval. Elections aren’t to be held under martial law per Ukranian law, and there have been referenda votes held among the Rada to determine if elections should be held, which failed.

    Edit: referendum would entail direct democracy. That isn’t what happened - it was just a vote by the legislature.

    • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 months ago

      I would buy this if westerners applied the same nuance to states under imperialist siege, but of course they never have that nuance.

      • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        I agree that the situation isn’t treated with nuance, typically, by westerners. But in this case, this is neither particularly nuanced nor naïve - it’s just a statement of fact that the parliament has voted repeatedly to extend martial law.

        That doesn’t mean Ukraine is a super-democratic country. It only means that it is the case that the government, made up of elected representatives (and yes, Ukraine banned 11 political parties for alleged Russian ties - one of them with ~10% of parliamentary seats - so the representativeness of the legislature is certainly debatable) has voted to not allow presidential elections until the war is over.

        Obviously it’d take a much longer explanation to capture all of the relevant geopolitical context, but this is a factually accurate statement about what is happening, yes?

        • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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          2 months ago

          Let me get this right, they purged the opposition and afterwards vote to mantain power? 😅

          • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            They purged roughly 10% - 12% of the opposition by parliament seats, yeah - that means it is at least that much less democratic. I’m just stating facts here. This isn’t a strong defense of the democratic values of Ukraine, just a statement that they aren’t wholly undemocratic as suggested in the meme - it’s misleading.

    • papalonian@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Genuine questions:

      Was he seemingly fairly elected originally, and did he hold elections previously? (I don’t know how Ukrainian elections work or how long he was in office before 2022)

      How “in control” is he of the parliament / the referenda determining elections? Is it a Trump situation where all his buddies are in position to say, “sure! give him all the power!”, or is there more separation?

      I’m admittedly relatively uninformed in the conflict, but I will say it was interesting seeing the general opinion of Lemmy go from “Slava Ukraini, fuck Russian Nazis, here’s some footage of Russian teenagers getting blown up with drones, Trump bad for not wanting to give aid” to “Zelensky is a fascist war criminal and also a Nazi and dumb American liberals are bad for siding with them” seemingly overnight. The switch happened a while ago but it was apparently unanimous.