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Re the Maidan uprising, some people here, who rightly think that the Democratic claim that “Putin’s Facebook ads elected Trump” is utterly ridiculous, somehow totally buy into the idea that “Vicky Nuland’s pastries overthrew the legitimately elected government of Ukraine”. They should know better. Either both of these statements are true (you never know what might have tipped the balance) or neither is true (maybe they made some small marginal difference but deeply rooted domestic political movements cannot be conjured up into existence by an outsider with a few ads or cookies). Accepting these as true is based in the inability to see the opposition as legitimate – such evil people CAN’T possibly represent the TRUE sentiments of the public – if they appear to do so, it is only thru trickery AND upon projection – they know that they achieved their own legitimacy thru similar trickery so they assume that the other side must do the same.

If it really is possible to astroturf a Color Revolution, then Putin was a really weak ass guy who was not capable of outbribing the CIA right in his own back yard. But that’s not true – as we found out in Afghanistan, if the people you are bribing have no real domestic base, you might as well light the money on fire for all the lasting impact it’s going to have. Not only did Putin not learn this lesson in 2014, he STILL hasn’t learned it because when his troops got to Ukraine in February, none of the people he had supposedly “bought” were anywhere to be found.

You want to know whether Zelensky is popularly elected? The population of Ukraine rising up to resist the Russian invader despite being outgunned big time - that’s your evidence that Zelensky is the people’s choice.

But there are other considerations. Stalin wasn’t the people’s choice. We backed him because the alternative was Germany ruling Russia *and* the rest of Europe. Similarly, it’s not important who rules Ukraine - as long as it’s not Russia, just as we did not care who ruled Kuwait, as long as it wasn’t Iraq.