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But what about Ukrainian self determination? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml

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So Ukraine has turned into a shit show with on the one hand Russia and on the other hand the US and EU. It is clear that Ukraine is merely a pawn in their chess game. This is clear to me.

I try to make it clear to my surroundings too but one question keeps coming back to me whenever it comes to peace talks: what about what Ukrainians want? Should they accept a split in their country with Russia seizing captured land?

I noticed that I do not have a clear answer to this and I wanted to see some input from you guys. Peace talks should imo be the goal as it would be the end to a bloody conflict and it would further (even if slightly) reduce risk for a bigger war. But it is also clear that Ukraine is just a pawn in those peace talks and everything will be decided between the US and Russia. Is it realistic to acknowledge Ukrainian interest in this? And if so, to what extent can leftist support said interests?

Thank you in advance for your answers. It might make it easier for me to go against the warmongering that has been going on lately, and to prevent people close to me from falling for it.

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[–] Rextreff@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Are we sure the referendums weren't rigged?

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Rigged how? If you mean in the sense of outright lying about the results or ballot stuffing, i very much doubt that. I remember people from the DPR/LPR were posting videos at the time showing how the voting was being done, and it was basically organized by the local government and staffed by local volunteers. The Russians were just there to protect the polling stations.

And they invited observers too if i remember correctly (though of course the "collective West" and its institutions conveniently refused to send anyone because they said the referendums were illegitimate). Also they wouldn't really need to rig a vote in areas that are as heavily ethnically/culturally Russian identifying as those four Oblasts.

And sure you can say that this still doesn't prove that there wasn't tampering, but how can you prove something like that? Ultimately the burden of proof is on those who allege fraud and rigging. And why doesn't the West, which always accuses Russia of rigging, apply the same standard of skepticism to their own and their allies' votes? Why is it only Russia's votes that are always viewed with such suspicion and assumed a priori to be fraudulent?

However if you mean rigged in the sense that the result was not 100% representative of the opinions of the entire population of those Oblasts then yes, that may be true. One of the problems i mentioned already is that only people in Russian held territory could vote, and the four Oblasts were only partially held by Russia at that time. It's also likely that a certain number of pro-Ukrainian people fled to Ukrainian held territory.

The second problem is that some of those who were very pro-Ukrainian probably just boycotted the vote, so this skewed the end result toward the pro-Russian side. But this factor can be adjusted for by looking at the overall voter turnout numbers, and those were quite high, especially in the two easternmost Oblasts, Donetsk and Lugansk, which had been fighting a war against the Kiev regime for eight years.

I'm not saying it was a perfect process, but it was as good as it could be under the circumstances. It would be better to have referendums in peacetime, but what's done is done and these four regions are no longer in question. Russia has already written them into their constitution and they aren't going to repeat the vote again for these four. Other regions in Ukraine can do it better once there is peace.