Riots in Ukraine - What is really going on?

[Xithras]

18. I don't like toppling democratic governments over political disagreements.

The problem I have is that Ukraine is a democracy. A corrupt one to be sure, as most are to some degree or another, but the general consensus is that the elections weren't actually stolen. Some Ukrainians and Europeans even go as far as claiming that Ukraine is NOT a democracy, though their reasons for doing so would be a surprise to most Americans. According to the Ukrainian "pro-democracy" movement, having a PRESIDENT concentrates too much power into the hands of one person. The main Ukrainian pro-democracy group openly equates presidencies with autocratic dictatorships, and claims that only pure parliamentary systems are truly democratic. Under their definition, Obama is an autocratic dictator. I suspect that most of us here would oppose that definition.

The democratically elected non-military government made a decision that SOME of its citizens did not like, and those unhappy citizens responded by taking over government buildings and shutting down the capitol city for weeks. Keep in mind that polling confirms that a MINORITY of Ukrainians support the protesters. Only 30% of Ukrainians believe that the free trade agreements these protesters are fighting for will actually be beneficial to the Ukrainian people. Less than half supported its passage in the first place.

The government predictably responded with violence. Think about it...if Republicans forcefully took over government buildings in Washington DC and shut the city down for days on end because they opposed something that Obama did and accused him of being an autocratic dictator, how do you think WE would react? Would our law enforcement use violence to dislodge the protesters? Would Democrats support that violence? We ARE talking about the same situation...a political minority trying to force its will onto the majority, even though the minorities positions have been rejected through open and fair democratic processes.

Ukraine isn't a third world dictatorship that is arbitrarily passing laws to oppress its people. It is a free democracy in which the government made a decision that infuriated a minority of its people. There is NO QUESTION that some of the violence has gone well beyond what anyone would consider "acceptable", but that doesn't change the fact that we're talking about sanctioning and toppling a free and democratic government simply because we don't like one of its political decisions.

We're getting a heavily spun version of this in the west for two reasons. First, the EU isn't happy about losing access to the Ukrainian markets, and second because NATO wanted access to Ukraine to poke a stick in Putin's eye.