so just to recap here, Russia is
obviously the bad guys here, but man Ukraine has been moving further and further from openness and democracy
since US overthrew their government in 2014.
Zelensky just moved to ban
11 political parties in Ukraine, including the Opposition Platform for Life party, which came second in the recent elections, currently holds 44 seats (roughly 10% of all seats) in the 450-seat Ukrainian Parliament, and is the largest opposition party to Zelensky's Servant of the People party.
Here are some excerpts from a recent article on this written by a Ukrainian author/sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko who works at a university in Berlin and wrote a book about the Euromaidan protests in 2013-2014;
link"The suspensions have more to do with the post-Euromaidan polarisation of Ukrainian politics than genuine security concerns related to the Russian invasion.
These parties do command significant public support. For example, three of the recently suspended parties participated in the parliamentary elections in 2019 and combined received about 2.7 million votes (18.3 percent) and in the most recent polls conducted before Russia’s invasion, these parties collectively scored about 16-20 percent of the vote.So, this
isn't good. Has been a pattern in Ukraine however. They've been banning parties, censoring media, and arresting opposition since 2014 without much evidence/due process. They have now banned the #1 and #2 largest opposition parties in the country. They banned the #2 largest opposition party last year. No banning of ultra-right wing parties or disbanding of state sponsored neo-nazi militias/police though....
https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1505963988470968328?s=20&t=nIk_1dQX6OK_fX4R_6A_hw
