This was written before Volodymyr Zelensky's official term as President ran out on May 20 2024. However he's stayed on as President since then anyway, because Ukraine declared martial law when Russia launched its SMO in 2022, and according to the BBC, there was "broad public support" for Zelensky remaining President. Russia considers him illegitimate, but all western leaders and media continue to refer to him as 'President Zelensky'.

Since the beginning of Russia's Special Military Operation in Ukraine, the conflict has been universally characterised in the western media and by western politicians as a battle between democracy and autocracy/dictatorship, with Ukraine firmly on the side of democracy. If such an insulting oversimplification were to be taken seriously (and not everyone does), what exactly are the criteria by which Ukraine could be judged to be a democracy and Russia an autocracy?

Freedom of the press

Since 2019, laws have been introduced in Ukraine that curtail press freedom in the name of 'fighting disinformation' or 'stopping the spread of fake news'. In practice this means that the Ukrainian National Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting are able to block websites and TV and radio stations, if they don't approve of what they're saying. In February 2021, they used these powers to shut down three TV stations. In January 2023, the draft bill introduced in 2019 was passed.

In February 2022, Russia took action to investigate media outlets publishing what it considers false/fake information about the SMO (allegedly including calling it an ‘invasion’, an ‘assault’ or a ‘declaration of war’). In March 2022 they banned Meta, for ‘extremist activities’ - specifically for allowing hate speech, as long as it is against Russians. Russian news sites RT and Sputnik were both blocked in the EU within days of the start of the SMO. In response, Russia blocked western sites including the BBC and Deutsche Welle.

Freedom of opposition political parties

Within a month of the start of the SMO, eleven political parties were banned due to having 'links to Russia'. Being accused of having links to Russia is a vague accusation that could apply to an awful lot of people in Ukraine. 'Pro-Russian' politician Viktor Medvedchuk was taken into SBU custody in April 2022, and Zelensky offered to exchange him with Russia for Ukrainian prisoners of war... even though Medvedchuk is himself Ukrainian. He had previously been under house arrest, under investigation for allegedly having connections to separatist fighters in the DPR and LPR, and for having profited from Crimea after it was annexed by/voted to join Russia.

Freedom of religion

In December 2022, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate was banned, on the grounds that it was affiliated with Moscow. The SBU raided a number of churches. There has been widespread outrage about this, not that you would know this from the western press. The UK even sanctioned Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in June 2022 for his support for the SMO.

In March 2023, the Ukrainian authorities cancelled the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s lease on the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, thereby decreeing that the monks occupying the Lavra should be expelled. As of April 3, there are still ongoing demonstrations and the monks refuse to leave.

Human rights

The US Department of State's Ukraine 2019 Human Rights Report states that

The report goes on to say that similar human rights abuses were reported in Russia-controlled DPR, LPR and Crimea, which is of course equally deplorable - but this doesn't mean that the abuse in government-controlled Ukraine didn't happen. The UN's 2021 Report on the Human Rights situation in Ukraine states that the human rights situation had improved, but still details abuses by both sides.

So in the context of the SMO, why is Ukraine a defender of democracy despite the abuses, but Russia is an aggressor because of the abuses? Since February 2022 I've seen some very upsetting videos of assaults on (and murders of) civilians suspected of being pro-Russian, by both Ukrainian security forces and paramilitaries, all of which were presented proudly, as warnings. To say nothing of the videos of abuse and murder of Russian prisoners of war, or the calls made to the families or mothers of killed or captured Russian servicemen to either gloat about their deaths or extract ransoms for their lives or physical wellbeing, of which there are many.

Searching for news stories about ransom videos for Ukrainian PoWs, there is one story that gets repeated in numerous outlets, alleging that the mother of a Ukrainian soldier posted on Facebook that she had been sent a video of her son being interrogated by Russian forces, and that they had demanded €5000 from her, or he would be executed. Bizarrely, she says that the kidnappers also screamed "Slava Ukraini" into the phone. The alleged Facebook post has been deleted, but the video in question was tweeted by Mikhailo Podolyak, adviser to president Zelensky. In it, the soldier says he is a member of the 109th territorial defense brigade of Donetsk, that he hasn't been hit "except this time"(?) and that he does not need medical attention. There is nothing in the video about demanding money for his release, or any of the other lurid details in the media reports. There also seem to exist no followup articles to tell us what happened.

Democratic values

Much of the current situation hinges on the perception of how democracy has been practiced since the Euromaidan coup (or the Revolution of Dignity, depending how you see it). The democratically-elected president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted after he refused to sign a trade deal with the EU in 2013, in favour of a deal with Russia. The group Right Sector (Pravvi Sektor) were instrumental in the Euromaidan protests, and they are either far-right extremists or just nationalists, depending who's talking about them.

Crimea

Residents of the Russian-majority Crimea were not happy with the ousting of Yanukovych, and protested against the new coup government. Some evidence suggests that the Euromaidan coup was part of a plan by the Obama White House to seize Russia's naval base at Sevastopol, giving Crimea even more reason to be wary of Ukrainian integration with western powers. The protests were violently suppressed, and ultimately culminated in the disputed March 2014 Crimean status referendum, in which 97% of participants voted to join Russia. The UN declared it invalid.

On 2 May 2014, 48 demonstrators were killed at the Odessa Union Building, both by a fire in the building and by being attacked by members of Right Sector and other groups if they tried to leave. According to Sergei Lavrov via TASS in January 2023, Ukraine not only acquitted those detained for involvement in the fire, but has started legal proceedings against some surviving protesters.

The Donbas regions

On 11 May 2014, the Donbas status referendums (disputed by everyone except Russia) resulted in 89% and 96% of participants respectively, voting for Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts to declare independence from Ukraine, calling themselves the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). Ukraine responded by launching the Anti-Terror Operation (ATO), aimed at taking back control of these regions. The DPR and LPR do not completely cover the Donetsk and Lugansk regions; notably Mariupol is in Donetsk oblast but not the DPR, and was the base of operations of the Azov regiment.

In September 2022, the DPR and LPR, along with Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, voted to join the Russian Federation. Naturally, the western media denounced them as illegal or invalid, as did the UN, despite the Russian Central Election Commission claiming that there were over 100 international observers working on the referendums. One of those observers even lost his job in Germany for taking part.

The BBC and others went so far as to claim that soldiers were going door to door to collect votes, strongly implying an element of coercion. Eva K Bartlett, who was in the DPR at the time and has been since 2014, has lots of video testimony of people saying that the soldiers were there for their protection, and that the purpose of the home voting was to prevent people from needing to gather in large groups, as this would present a target for Ukrainian shelling. But as they also say, they long ago gave up on trying to prove anything to the West.

Republished from The Reluctant Dissident.