You are the one who wrote a garbled subjective alternate history in your post #33. I can back up everything I wrote in my post. You can’t back up yours because it’s flat wrong. I don’t dispute your main point that Zelensky is doing the best he knows how and is able to do for Ukraine, given the constraints imposed upon him — although I might add a “perhaps” to that because of certain unknowns.
Ukrainians elected him and threw out Putin’s puppets who were the corrupt politicians prior to the Orange Revolution.
He’s the guy they have now, and IMHO he’s doing what he has to do to help his nation survive this invasion. He’ll cozy up to the worst of folks, including Biden, if they help him.
It doesn’t mean Ukraine hadn’t been corrupt. It doesn’t mean Zelensky is George Washington. But they could have done a lot worse.
Link: https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4118966/posts?page=33#33
Fact: Zelensky was not elected as a result of the Orange Revolution of 2004. Zelensky, like all Ukrainian politicians, is corrupt. See: Pandora Papers. He was groomed for power and financed by corrupt oligarch Kolomoisky. He was elected in 2019.
Fact: The president before Zelensky was Poroshenko, who was elected as a result of the Maidan putsch. Poroshenko was a corrupt oligarch, but he was not a Putin puppet in any way, shape or form, but was naturally antagonistic toward Russia after the events of 2014 what with Russia swiping Crimea, etc. He was our guy.
Fact: The president before Poroshenko was SBU head Turchynov, who filled in as acting president for a few months after the putsch ousted President Yanukovich, whom the neocons claim was a Putin puppet. He wasn’t really, as evidenced by some of his actions. Like Yushchenko before him, Yanukovich tried to court both EU/NATO and Russia/CIS — arguably a wise course for Ukraine, but unlike Yushchenko was forced to choose between a rather bad deal offered by the EU vs a sweet deal offered by Russia. He was ousted in the 2014 Maidan putsch.
Fact: The president before Yanukovich was Yushchenko. He was brought to power by way of the Orange Revolution in 2004. He appeared two be somewhat less corrupt than some other Ukrainian politicians, including those in his own coalition (with whom he went on the outs), but was hardly squeaky clean. There were credible allegations that his campaign was financed by Russian oligarch Berezovsky. He courted both EU/NATO and Russia/CIS — arguably a wise course for Ukraine. He also pandered to western Ukrainian nationalists, and declared Bandera a Hero of Ukraine.
There was less opinion and gobbledegook in your second post, but my statement was “ Ukrainians elected him and threw out Putin’s puppets who were the corrupt politicians prior to the Orange Revolution.”
Those were two different events separated by time.
It’s fact that prior to the Orange Revolution there were Kremlin backed, corrupt elected officials in Ukraine.