this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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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.
I would buy this if westerners applied the same nuance to states under imperialist siege, but of course they never have that nuance.
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?
Let me get this right, they purged the opposition and afterwards vote to mantain power? 😅
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.
And the bit where they criminalised over ten opposition parties?
??? I can't find evidence of any such referenda. This seems to just be false. Do you just mean 'survey'?
I am (and most people are) not saying Ukraine MUST hold elections tomorrow. But the meme's point stands - that none of these people have a meaningful democratic mandate.
Referendum was incorrect. It was just a vote by the legislature, so elected representatives. I had seen Referendum used in some source, but I forget where.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Ukrainian_presidential_election
So democratic, much liberty.
So elected representatives decided that further elections are not necessary, and in the country where opposition is banned, hamm, indeed a democracy to behold.
I mean, banning most of the opposition parties certainly helps getting the cooperation of the remaining ones.
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.
Lemmy has always had people who took the second position, and still has people who take the first position. There has been a general shift, but it was neither sudden nor unanimous.
When I first joined Lemmy, those that held the second opinion were down voted en masse and we're always lambasted as Russian trolls and Nazi sympathizers. I never saw a pro Russia / anti Ukraine post or comment with positive votes. Nowadays I don't think I see many explicitly "pro Russia" posts but there's a good number of anti Ukraine posts that are relatively high on the front page, and most pro Ukraine comments have at least one upvoted reply calling them a liberal or pro-fascist.
I didn't necessarily mean unanimous as in, "everyone now has this opinion", so much as "the hive mind has decided that we now upvote this opinion and down vote that one". Like, there's Trump supporters on Lemmy, whenever they comment anything pro-Trump it's kind of a given (not necessarily saying a good one) that it's going to get downvoted, and most things critical of him will get upvoted even if it's not the most accurate or ingenuous criticism. To me, it very much seemed like one week it was "upvote Ukraine, downvote Russia!", and the next it was "downvote Ukraine, Russia...🤷🏽♂️!". Somewhere around the Iran shitshow.
Might just be a matter of what coms you're reading
Zelensky was fairly elected because his platform was peace with Russia and he had strong messaging about how Russians and Ukrainians are brotherly nations. Of course he then immediately dropped the pretense the moment he got elected and started passing anti-Russian laws.
Sorry but I got the hick.
I would personally disagree, not completely but I feel it’s incorrect. I would ask, is Zelensky leading a country with fascist ideology? Let’s see…
Well, that’s concerning, no?
The “Banderite” term refers to Stepan Bandera.
Bandera in 2010 was awarded as “Hero of Ukraine”. He is in traditional folk Ukrainian music. In October 2007, the city of Lviv erected a statue dedicated to Bandera. On 1 January 2014, Bandera's 105th birthday was celebrated by a torchlight procession of 15,000 people in the centre of Kyiv and thousands more rallied near his statue in Lviv. In 2021, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory under the authority of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, included Bandera, among other Ukrainian nationalist figures, in Virtual Necropolis, a project intended to commemorate historical figures important for Ukraine.
Well, that’s concerning pt.2
Bibi looking at your comment like 👀
Well, that’s concerning pt.3
How the U.S. Has Empowered and Armed Neo-Nazis in Ukraine
Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
Nazis in Ukraine: Seeing through the fog of the information war
Do you think Ukraine should allow the invasion and surrender, if a large portion of their support comes from Nazi sympathizers? I'm not trying to rage bait or or pull a "So yOu thInK thIS tHEn?!" I'm genuinely trying to understand the other side of the argument.
Like, I agree with you, it's obviously not "good" to have those fucks on your side. But it's really easy for me to say that while I'm sitting on my ass in my comfortable house thousands of miles away from conflict. If I were the leader of a country being invaded by a much larger force, and I had essentially a militia in my country ready to fight and defend it, and my options were "use the militia or watch your nation burn", I'd probably be in the same position..
And I will try to reply in a normal way, I promise. I already got this same question discussing the same topic (not saying someone is repeating a propaganda they did not understand, but you know… here we are again.)
This question makes a big assumption that it’s hard to ignore. Because “if a large portion of their support comes from Nazi” we have only two options: either you don’t have people fit for combat that are not nazi in your entire country (so you are a leader of a nazi country) or they are not all nazi and you are picking the bad ones for… reasons?
we are also ignoring that we are discussing an “if” questions. So yes, we can make up any reality we want.
Like image asking: “what man? Hitler either had no choice but to create the SS or his country would be destroyed!”
???? I mean, okay good… what do you want me to tell you…
@papalonian@lemmy.world the nazi thing is not propaganda; the united states congress literally banned weapons sales to ukraine because of heir nazis proclivities. their first attempt to do so was back in 2015 -- ask yourself how are you 11 years slower than congress in recognizing this?
Thank you for the good faith response, promise I'm not a parrot for anyone lol.
In my (uninformed) view, it isn't so much that, "Ukraine only has Nazis capable of fighting", so much as it's, "Russia is a way bigger country with a larger army, we need literally everyone we've got, even the Nazis".
Like if the entire country was rallying behind a Nazi flag and they were tossing people in concentration camps and making plans to genocide another group it'd obviously be a different story, but they're trying to kick people out of their own land, and as far as I know (again, not terribly far) they don't have plans to keep going afterwards. If that were the case... Yeah, maybe Russia should just take em all out. Not a fan of Russia, but less of a fan of Nazis.
The Hitler analogy isn't a fair one because Germany was an aggressor. The argument can't be made that they were in the same situation that Ukraine is in.
I'll just point that the rallying behind a Nazi flag is not exactly how things go in reality. MAGAs use the USA flag for the majority, the Brazilian far right tried to stole the Brazilian soccer uniform as a their symbol(which is the country flag colors), the Ukraine banderites was using the Ukraine flag(with the nazi spin).
That’s a lot of fascists tho. Also, what a depressing and shitty situation to be in. If that was the case and we want to be shiny warriors of justice, we should at least talk about it.
Ukraine has always been a very divided country (east/west) and the central government has been hostile towards Russian majority oblasts (and there are since Russia is a neighbour). There is whole wiki page about Ukrainization which itself it’s a strange concept, no? Ukraine and the Ukrainian language come from Russian, it was the most beloved region during the URSS, little Russia was called. Why all this hostility, why the ukrainization? It’s like doing an irlandization of British people living in Irland. That sounds insane no?
But look now how far we went, from “Putin is crazy dictator who just wants war” to “he might be right about the de-nazification of Ukraine”. Also this is almost literally the meme where the guy tattoos a swastika to prove he’s not a Nazi.
I’m not saying he’s right, but if my next door neighbour calls my dead mother a whore everyday and one day I punch him in the face, that’s still violence but he deserves it. You won’t catch me crying for nazis, that’s all.
I mean yeah. That's more or less my take. I don't agree with the mentality of, "Ukraine can do no wrong in the defense of their country", I don't think that their alliance with their fascist groups should be swept under the rug or buried in history or anything like that. It's a sin they will have to pay for in one way or another eventually. But I don't think it's enough (at least for me) to side with Putin. Even if Ukraine was a majority fascist nation and Zelensky was an open Nazi sympathizer, my limited knowledge of Putin's politics do not lead me to believe that he would stage an invasion solely for the altruistic act of rooting out the Nazis.
I'll have to take a look at the Ukrainization wiki article. I knew of the divide between the East and West and that there was hostility between native Ukrainians and foreign Russians, but did not know there was a specific term for the "culture war".
The Azor group tied party got about 1% in popular election.
Is 1% a widely held belief?
It’s a metric to gauge the feelings towards fascists ideology. Yes, 1% for a strictly confirmed military Nazi battalion? Yes it is a lot.
What country are you from? Or alternatively, which government/organisation do you feel is doing the good work? Let's check if that country/org has a far righters and what is the feeling of other citizens towards their far righters.
1% for far right group, not for the battalion. And having ONLY 1% of far righters or nationalists in any country is frankly better than I expected.
Oh, sorry, my bad, I wrote that to agree with you. My bad for not being clear enough
My two cents as a western European: several things can be true at once. Russia is still the agressor, starting with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Zelenskyy was elected shortly after that, replacing a puppet regime that was in place for quite some time (although that's just what we've been told, again I'm not Ukrainian so I haven't followed a lot of it).
Zelenskyy does have some folks in government that are his unconditional allies but that's uniform in politics. His current role is that of a caricature he's become since he was painted as some sort of hero in 2022, where he made some correct PR decisions. Now that he shares a stage with the US's odd characters, his job has become somewhat bizarre so he's fully aware he needs to be looking more at the EU. He's always been pro-EU and wanted to join as soon as he took power.
This shift you speak of came from lemmy.ml or lemmygrad, but their users also spill over into world since those instances have mostly been defederated because of the baseless accusations towards Ukraine. What is based in reality is that there in extremists in Ukrainian ranks that have, let's say, unorthodox views, but their main objective is still to just fight Russia out of Ukraine.
I think that for most of lemmy, people are just getting more or less bored of voicing their support, making it easier for pro-Russian voices to prevail. But it's usually pretty much troll-ey ragebait and I think a lot of lemmings just downvote and move on. Plus, lemmy and piefed have pretty decent filtering options making it easier to just block content you're tired of seeing.
That is the ukrainian october 7
My assumption is that the Russian psyops teams discovered Lemmy and have been influencing opinions, the same as they have previously on Facebook.
The communists have been on Lemmy since the beginning.
Of course it is, liberal vanity and solipsism means you cannot possibly countenance the prospect of an actual person disagreeing with you unless money has changed hands.
My assumption is that the NATO/nafo psyops teams utilize reddit and communities like .world and have been influencing opinions, the same as they have previously on Facebook.
Yes, because you're an extremist who can't imagine anyone genuinely disagreeing with you
Hahahaha
It would be naive to believe otherwise. Stay vigilant, and disconnect when you can. This shit is poison
Um, excuse me I have a note saying I’m exempt from doing democracy right now