Jesus christ guys. Let's keep this under control. The point of my comment was to illustrate that those against the current government in large part did not participate in the elections and that the east essentially didn't have a candidate (especially after Tsarev was violently attacked and basically chased out of national politics). The people in the east simply did not believe in the electoral process as a viable means of gaining representation. The fact that the electoral turnout matches the east west divide so clearly is not an accident or a fluke. It shows how this country works.
That's a ridiculous comment. It shows that the rebels were successful in disrupting voter turnout in large parts of eastern Ukraine. That does not change the fact that Ukraine is a democracy, albeit one trying to assert itself over unelected thugs running around and declaring self-rule.
The electoral turnout in the south and the east was affected in areas where there are no rebels. The borders of the decreased turnout don't match the borders of the rebellion. They match the classical east-west divide of Ukrainian politics. Note the lower turnout in the South-West (near Odessa) of the country which is even further from the rebellion then say Cherkasy, or Nikolaev. And of course the lowered turnout in the few northern regions (Sumskaya Oblast' from the looks of it) can't be accounted for by rebels. Kharkov, where there are no rebels, and where there are no major anti-government actions (though there were some protests during the earlier phase of the conflict), Dnepropetrovsk, Kherson, etc.
Feanor, any info on the new Russian military buildup along the Ukrainian border? Buildup, according to NATO’s chief, increased level of border security, according to Russians.
The buildup is there. I mentioned earlier that when Ukrainian troops attacked Slavyansk and it looked like they might break through, Russian troops moved towards the border, and the Ukrainians backed off. I don't have many details.
Rather a different scale. The demonstrators in Kiev were trying to get rid of a criminal (probably involved in murders, as well as being a kleptocrat) president who was subverting the organs of state to make it hard to get rid of him via normal means, & have a new election. They weren't declaring themselves to be rulers of part of the state, putting out leaflets ordering Jews to register, shooting down aircraft, operating tanks & artillery against government forces, or calling on another state to annex parts of the country.
If you really think the two sets of circumstances are comparable, then you have no sense of perspective.
They're comparable, in the sense that we certainly are able to compare them. They are very very different circumstances, which is what I think you were trying to say. Honestly I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the DNR and LNR leadership. But as for subverting organs of the state, if the opposition wanted him gone they could have waited until the next election. Or they could have gathered the necessary votes in parliament. If they were such lovers of democracy, that is. Alternatively you can concede that the elections are thoroughly rigged, the parliament is insanely corrupt, and those are not viable means of dealing with the fundamental problems in Ukraine. But in that case we're back to this not being much of a democracy and the opposition gained their victory not even through the Euro-Maydan which was willing to compromise, but through the uncompromising violence of the Right Sector and Svoboda fighters which stormed the government quarters despite the declared agreements.
And of course, remember, Poroshenko is not some newcomer to politics. He was a political player under Yuschenko, and an even bigger one under Yanukovich. He's managed to distance himself from his own history, but he's a representative of the same political elite that's been running Ukraine this whole time.
EDIT: To be perfectly clear, the leadership of the rebels (self-proclaimed basically) is in many ways as far removed from the actual people as the Kiev government. The sad truth is that nobody is actually speaking for those people for whom Ukrainization, and Westernization is unwanted. That doesn't mean that those people don't exist, and that they don't have legitimate concerns and need legitimate representation.
