Who is the third from the left?PS: Sorry that was politically incorrect, let me rephrase my question: Who is the second from the far right?
Keir Starmer, aka Kid Starver and Kiev Sturmer
Aka Queer Harmer
To be fair, they’re (understandably) under martial law which has been extended in 90 day increments since 2022 with parliamentary approval. Elections aren’t to be held under martial law per Ukranian law, and there have been
referendavotes held among the Rada to determine if elections should be held, which failed.Edit: referendum would entail direct democracy. That isn’t what happened - it was just a vote by the legislature.
I would buy this if westerners applied the same nuance to states under imperialist siege, but of course they never have that nuance.
I agree that the situation isn’t treated with nuance, typically, by westerners. But in this case, this is neither particularly nuanced nor naïve - it’s just a statement of fact that the parliament has voted repeatedly to extend martial law.
That doesn’t mean Ukraine is a super-democratic country. It only means that it is the case that the government, made up of elected representatives (and yes, Ukraine banned 11 political parties for alleged Russian ties - one of them with ~10% of parliamentary seats - so the representativeness of the legislature is certainly debatable) has voted to not allow presidential elections until the war is over.
Obviously it’d take a much longer explanation to capture all of the relevant geopolitical context, but this is a factually accurate statement about what is happening, yes?
Let me get this right, they purged the opposition and afterwards vote to mantain power? 😅
They purged roughly 10% - 12% of the opposition by parliament seats, yeah - that means it is at least that much less democratic. I’m just stating facts here. This isn’t a strong defense of the democratic values of Ukraine, just a statement that they aren’t wholly undemocratic as suggested in the meme - it’s misleading.
And the bit where they criminalised over ten opposition parties?
there have been referenda to determine if elections should be held
??? I can’t find evidence of any such referenda. This seems to just be false. Do you just mean ‘survey’?
I am (and most people are) not saying Ukraine MUST hold elections tomorrow. But the meme’s point stands - that none of these people have a meaningful democratic mandate.
Referendum was incorrect. It was just a vote by the legislature, so elected representatives. I had seen Referendum used in some source, but I forget where.
On 26 February 2025, after a previous failed vote on a similar resolution,[27] the Verkhovna Rada passed a resolution reaffirming that elections should not be held during martial law, and also pledged to hold a presidential election upon the conclusion of the Russo-Ukrainian War.[28] On 6 March 2025 opposition politicians Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, after having confirmed that they had held discussions with United States representatives, confirmed that they still opposed elections held during wartime.[29]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Ukrainian_presidential_election
On 6 March 2025 opposition politicians Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, after having confirmed that they had held discussions with United States representatives, confirmed that they still opposed elections held during wartime.
So democratic, much liberty.
So elected representatives decided that further elections are not necessary, and in the country where opposition is banned, hmm, indeed a democracy to behold.
I mean, banning most of the opposition parties certainly helps getting the cooperation of the remaining ones.
Genuine questions:
Was he seemingly fairly elected originally, and did he hold elections previously? (I don’t know how Ukrainian elections work or how long he was in office before 2022)
How “in control” is he of the parliament / the referenda determining elections? Is it a Trump situation where all his buddies are in position to say, “sure! give him all the power!”, or is there more separation?
I’m admittedly relatively uninformed in the conflict, but I will say it was interesting seeing the general opinion of Lemmy go from “Slava Ukraini, fuck Russian Nazis, here’s some footage of Russian teenagers getting blown up with drones, Trump bad for not wanting to give aid” to “Zelensky is a fascist war criminal and also a Nazi and dumb American liberals are bad for siding with them” seemingly overnight. The switch happened a while ago but it was apparently unanimous.
the general opinion of Lemmy go from “Slava Ukraini, fuck Russian Nazis, here’s some footage of Russian teenagers getting blown up with drones, Trump bad for not wanting to give aid” to “Zelensky is a fascist war criminal and also a Nazi and dumb American liberals are bad for siding with them” seemingly overnight. The switch happened a while ago but it was apparently unanimous.
Lemmy has always had people who took the second position, and still has people who take the first position. There has been a general shift, but it was neither sudden nor unanimous.
When I first joined Lemmy, those that held the second opinion were down voted en masse and we’re always lambasted as Russian trolls and Nazi sympathizers. I never saw a pro Russia / anti Ukraine post or comment with positive votes. Nowadays I don’t think I see many explicitly “pro Russia” posts but there’s a good number of anti Ukraine posts that are relatively high on the front page, and most pro Ukraine comments have at least one upvoted reply calling them a liberal or pro-fascist.
I didn’t necessarily mean unanimous as in, “everyone now has this opinion”, so much as “the hive mind has decided that we now upvote this opinion and down vote that one”. Like, there’s Trump supporters on Lemmy, whenever they comment anything pro-Trump it’s kind of a given (not necessarily saying a good one) that it’s going to get downvoted, and most things critical of him will get upvoted even if it’s not the most accurate or ingenuous criticism. To me, it very much seemed like one week it was “upvote Ukraine, downvote Russia!”, and the next it was “downvote Ukraine, Russia…🤷🏽♂️!”. Somewhere around the Iran shitshow.
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starting with the annexation of Crimea in 2014
That is the ukrainian october 7
Was he seemingly fairly elected originally, and did he hold elections previously? (I don’t know how Ukrainian elections work or how long he was in office before 2022)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_election
Zelensky was elected with a fairly overwhelming majority of nearly 75%. He was particularly supported in the east of Ukraine. He hasn’t held elections himself because Russia invaded the country.
Ukrainian electoral law prohibits elections during wartime. If it’s too unsafe, one can even argue that the security situation prevents free and fair elections, thus making an election under such circumstances unconstitutional. Zelensky wields significant authority in the country, but it’s not because he seized it, it’s because the country is politically fairly united due to the war. The Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies have taken aim at some high-level allies of Zelensky (though not the man himself, not that there are credible allegations or something), and thus far Zelensky has allowed the investigations and prosecutions.
The whole “Zelensky is a Nazi” thing is part of the Russian propaganda narrative. Ukraine’s history contains a fair few attempts at independence, and in more recent times against the Soviet Union. Back in the day, Ukrainian independence groups were ideologically aligned with the main enemy of the Soviets, which was Nazi Germany. This is the whole “Banderite” term being flung around: fascist groups who fought against the Soviets for Ukrainian independence.
Ukraine still regards these people as heroes for fighting against the Soviets. Their fascist ideology is mostly ignored, even by Zelensky (a Jewish man himself). Even today there are far-right groups in Ukraine. Zelensky has essentially recruited these people in the fight against Russia since they are fervent nationalists. Putin uses this as “evidence” that Ukraine is a fascist state, and that the Russian attack on Ukraine is as virtuous as the Soviet defense against the Nazis.
In reality, actual fascist ideology isn’t a widely held belief in Ukraine, and the parties that tried to run in the election espousing far-right views did not do well. The largest far-right party, Svoboda, received a mere 1.65% of the vote for their presidential candidate.
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The communists have been on Lemmy since the beginning.
Of course it is, liberal vanity and solipsism means you cannot possibly countenance the prospect of an actual person disagreeing with you unless money has changed hands.
My assumption is that the NATO/nafo psyops teams utilize reddit and communities like .world and have been influencing opinions, the same as they have previously on Facebook.
Yes, because you’re an extremist who can’t imagine anyone genuinely disagreeing with you
Hahahaha
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dont try to argue with the white army on lemmy. they cannot take any reasoning, lol. it seems like they dont know anyone from the proletariat and only care about spewing tsarist Propaganda…
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Um, excuse me I have a note saying I’m exempt from doing democracy right now
It’s just a bourgeois democracy.
Democracy is when the majority of voters hate the government and the greater that majority is the more democratic it is.
those are leaders of the free and democratic world right there . also why cant zelnsky dress normal
he’s a method actor
his image advisor has no idea what to do after getting blasted by Trump for not wearing a suit so now he’s trying to compensate with these ones.
I think it’s deliberately showing: “Guys my country is literally at war right now, I won’t pretend we’re not by keeping up appearances”
The war goes so bad that president of the country somehow lost his every suit to it?
multi party system, you get all the shades / 32bit if you like 🙌🏻. two party system result in us vs them (see US), only black and white / 1bit system.
How is Trump doing better than them?!!!
he’s not
Have you seen the average yank
Because Trump at least appeals to the feral hog demographic, as opposed to going out of his way to disappoint everyone
They can’t hold elections while at war. Check your own country’s constitution, it’s probably in there too.
Stopping elections for any reason is definitely democratic
Holding elections now would deprive everyone in the occupied territories of their vote.
And then you’d have a Ukrainian government that doesn’t represent the people in the occupied territories, essentially agreeing they’re not part of Ukraine anymore.The “occupied territories” seceded from Kiev and want nothing to do with western Ukraine.
Again, constitution.
Actually, in a multi party system, it is. If you only have two, or one political flavour you’ll get different results.
The number of parties has fuck all to do with how democratic a particular system is. It’s whose interests the parties represent that matters. In capitalist societies, parties serve the interests of the ruling capital owning class, and the working majority simply gets to pick which member of the exploiting class will rule over them and repress them.
In capitalist societies, parties serve the interests of the ruling capital owning class, and the working majority simply gets to pick which member of the exploiting class will rule over them and repress them.
Would you say that extend to elected representatives and from what background they come? E.g. elected representatives not coming from worker class?
On one hand you do recognize it’s the class domination that is the actual problem, the root of all evil, and that a socialist injected into said government is socialist in words, not in deeds (if the class domination is not stopped),
but on the other hand every time I read a post from you, you seem to refuse to notice said class domination, blinded by their government words, in selected countries of your choice (or even acknowledge possibility of said class domination, throwing “whataboutism”).
It is hard to take you seriously.
Do give a concrete example of me ignoring class dominance. It’s hard to take people who just make up unsubstantiated personal attacks instead of engaging in honest discussion seriously. Perhaps, you should actually spend the time to learn about these countries instead of making a clown of yourself in public.
When talking about sham democracies (capitalist “democracies”):
You:
Western implementation of democracy is indeed a sham while the working class majority do deserve a genuine vote is not the contradiction you seem to think it is bro.
Last I checked, China, [cut] exist. I’m sorry that I’ve underestimated the sheer extent of your ignorance on the subject you’re opining on.
(Crossed out Vietnam, Cuba and DPRK because I do not know enough about them).
How is that not ignoring class dominance happening in those countries is beyond me (e.g. https://spectrejournal.com/one-should-not-camouflage-capitalist-and-imperialist-china-as-socialist/ , ).
Gig economy? Up and rising. Literally industrial reserve army of low paid workers whose renumeration is artificially kept low, straight from what Marx foretold. Hukou? Used for the same, rural workers migrating to urban centers where they are not registered and exploited as low wage proletariat. Ownership? Vast majority of business in China, according to China, is privately owned. 80% of urban employment, totally private businesses. Technological cartels, like Pinduoduo. Like this fuckery: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinese-regulator-fines-confiscates-36-billion-yuan-food-delivery-platforms-2026-04-17/
Food delivery platform was scamming people, was actively acting like a damn mafia, was combatative against the police and judiciary, and did not cooperate with the government … and was fined 1.5% of the profit. No person holding actual power in the company C-level suit suffered any consequences. This shit happened in China, as if it was USA.
How can you be so blind is beyond any rational person.
Oh wow, you really think you’ve discovered something groundbreaking here. Yup, nobody has ever heard of contradictions or commodity production under socialism. You’re the first genius to point out that private ownership and wage labor still exist in China. Truly a revelation that would make Marx weep with joy!
The fact that you think socialism means the immediate abolition of every bourgeois relation overnight tells me your understanding of the subject comes from memes and a cursory skimming of a single Wikipedia paragraph. Socialism is not some sort of an utopia handed down from the heavens. It is a transitional society that emerges from capitalism and is therefore stamped with all the birthmarks of the old society. Commodity production, wage differentials, and even the market economy persist precisely because you cannot wave a magic wand and instantaneously create abundance and perfect class consciousness.
China’s gig economy and the hukou system are real problems and nobody with a functioning brain denies that. But the difference between China and a capitalist country is that the state, led by the Communist Party representing the working class, is actively intervening to regulate, reform, and suppress these contradictions. Hokou reforms are a perfect example of this. The food delivery fine you cited, a mere 1.5% of profit, is indeed insufficient and that is a legitimate criticism. But to present that as evidence that China is simply capitalist is to ignore the fact that the government has the legal and political power to improve the situation which is precisely what they are doing. The very fact that the regulator fined them at all, that the public outcry is taken seriously, that the party openly discusses the need to break monopoly capital, is something no bourgeois state would even pretend to do.
You want a socialist society with zero exploitation, zero inequality, and zero contradictions. That is called communism, and it will take a long time to get there. In the meantime, socialist societies are messy, uneven, and full of tensions just like every human society that has ever existed. That is an argument against socialism that only a person with an utterly infantile understanding of politics and economics could make. Your gotcha list just proves you have the analytical depth of a child.
The number of parties influences the percentual result.
You could say that in a 51/49 outcome 49% of the people isn’t represented but it’s still democratic.
I’m Belgian. We hold the world record in government foundations. I know how small percentages work and am pretty sure it’s democracy at work.
Do I like it? Not really, but it still democracy.
Pluralism has nothing to do with whether or not the will of the people is accurately reflected. One party states often have higher democratic representation because the people can more directly influence policy.
Last elections in Poland seen a whooping 17 parties and over 40 independents elected to sejm. However, you could not find a single socialist among them, not to mention communist, all 17 parties and over 40 independents are representing various flavours of liberalism
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And the reason they haven’t had an elections is because they don’t want this guy to be in charge?
I wonder if I’ll be down voted?
My favorite trope is how libs will inevitably start screeching about Russia when faced with the fact that their ideology is midwifing fascism.
Maybe i can think your meme is dumb while also agreeing that the people pictured are libs that I don’t like. I just don’t like dishonesty and your meme is just a dishonest smear instead of something with legitimate or logical basis. You’re crowing about how societies self-govern while under invasion and idk how anyone other than fellow leftists are supposed to glean any meaning from this. How would your society select its leaders and continue to operate under such circumstances? I’m noticing the lack of any ideas being expressed here other than “liberals bad”, which we all already know. This meme is just a lazy preach-to-the-choir meme and a waste of your propaganda efforts, really.
The only dishonesty here is in your own comment. We know what alternative systems to liberalism are, and there existing socialist states today. Pretending like nothing better is possible and nobody is offering any alternatives is the height of dishonesty.
everyone who dislikes oligofascism is a lib, lada is a premium auto brand, salo is dog food, we need to send our notorious skinhead division to defeat them because they are skinheads, etc
Anybody who starts talking about Russia to distract from what’s happening in their own liberal state descending into fascism is indeed a lib. It’s amazing how intellectually impoverished you people are that you think your transparent straw man is going to convince anyone. Nobody was talking about Russia here at all. It doesn’t matter what Russia is like, that’s not the standard you’re being held to. But of course liberal have no standards and stand for absolutely nothing.
supporting fascism to own the libs for… facilitating the rise of fascism. galaxy-brain stuff on display here. not a liberal, btw
not a liberal, btw
definitely a neoliberal
ardent communist rofl
if platner can call himself a leftist; you too can call yourself a communist despite espousing unquestionably neoliberal points of view. lol
lmfao nobody is supporting fascism to own the libs here, that’s just an idiotic straw man you came up with being utterly unable to engage with the argument honestly
oh man i clicked on your profile after reading this. You know the CCCP has be supplanted by something different, right? I’m sure the gazprom execs are thrilled to have your support, though.
You’re saying that of they held an election, people would either vote for Putin or someone that is pro Russia? I thought Ukraine was united against him…
This totally makes sense if we consider the fact that many westerners don’t consider nonwesterners to be people.
Colonizers can’t choose the presidents of sovereign nations anymore, the people there do the choosing now, and that makes the colonizers furious.
140% of the people choose Putin every time
Why make up obvious lies? Truth not in your favor?
Did putin pay you to say that
I’m confused by the comment? Putin is trying to colonize Ukraine. Putin mad because they had a free election to elect the person who is holding his own against an ageing wana be world power in a war going on for years that was supposed to be over in days. Also Putin rig’s his own elections so him demanding is bit well, fix your own shit before you fix someone else. Oh wait Putin does fix his own elections.
The Russian Federation is not trying to colonize Ukraine. Their goal is NATO neutrality, and annexation of the four oblasts, which are largely pro-Russian. This is a response to the ethnic repressions against Russians in the Donbass following the coup of Yanukovych in 2014, and the ensuing secession of Donetsk and Luhansk and the civil war that followed.
The war was never supposed to be over in days. This was circulated as a means to humiliate Russia, but all talks of an attack lasting days either came from many years before 2022, or from the west.
As for Putin rigging elections, this might be true, but we also know that he is legitimately popular in Russia. The nationalists are most popular, followed by the communists. The pro-western liberals like Navalny was are in the minority and have no real support base.
This goes against my current view of the situation. The NATO expansion is somewhat understandable, not enough for a war perhaps, but unsure.
Care to point me in the direction to read more about this?
What in particular do you question? It’s a complex and ongoing subject, so there’s no one-stop shop for it. The closest I can do is point you to threads like this one.
Thanks, exactly what I was looking for! 😄 As a Norwegian pretty much everyone sides with Ukraine, and I have not really challenged that view for myself. I have just accepted the narrative “Russia = imperialistic & bad. Ukraine = democracy & good”. So it’s probably a good idea to try to understand it
Understandable! It’s one of the more difficult topics for westerners like us to grasp, and it took me some time to come around to the ML consensus on the Russian Federation (ie, it isn’t imperialist if we accept Lenin’s analysis, and actually is anti imperialist even if run by bourgeois oligarchs).
Good on you for being open to non-western propaganda sources. Curiosity seems to be mostly dead in the lemmy liberal scene.
The amounts of war crimes alone, even if we were to accept that whole ‘supressing NATO’ excuse, which is bullshit, are enough to stop any goodwill towards Russia.
Wiki article with the whole Putin talk video
It was bullshit all along, and Ukraine would ignore NATO if Russia left it alone, which they never did, and ignored previous peace deals, yada yada, you don’t care anyway.
Talking about popularity in any state without free media is always a joke, including in US.
Ukraine would ignore NATO if Russia left it alone
It’s entirely not Ukraine’s choice. The west through institutes like the NED couped the government in 2014 with this end goal in mind (a spear tip against Russia and another block in the containment). If the banderites through some act of god decided to return to being neutral like yanukovych they’d just get couped again and replaced with the next down the list group happy to sacrifice as many Ukrainians as it takes to satisfy their western backers.
Kiev has committed massive numbers of war crimes. If your point is that committing war crimes should be a measuring stick, and the side with fewer war crimes is correct, then this is horribly reductive. Ukraine was fine with Russia until the west backed a coup in 2014 and empowered neofascists, this is why the whole civil war erupted and transitioned to war with Russia in 2022.
As for popularity, no state has “free media.” The people legitimately support Putin, in general, though the communists have been gaining ground.
What war crimes has Ukraine commited?
From the thread I linked elsewhere:
- https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/40th-periodic-report-human-rights-situation-ukraine-treatment-prisoners
- https://www.npr.org/2023/01/31/1152743054/human-rights-watch-ukraine-landmines
- CNN coverage of Donbas in 2014 https://xcancel.com/paulius60/status/1611148483859255296
- UN finds no genocide https://news.yahoo.com/un-commission-fails-evidence-russias-160057021.html
- https://mronline.org/2023/07/30/russia-donbass-and-the-reality-of-the-conflict-in-ukraine/
- Stoltenberg admits NATO was in Ukraine since 2014 https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_211698.htm
- https://www.kanekoa.news/p/osce-reports-reveal-ukraine-started
- HRW https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-cluster-munitions
- Donbas documentary 2016 https://youtube.com/watch?v=bN68OfFKaWs
- clip from the doc https://odysee.com/@justsomeclips:2/trade-union-burning-2014:8
- Ukraine in Donbas https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2022/08/10/what-ive-seen-of-ukraines-war-crimes-against-civilians-in-the-donbass-over-the-years/
- https://thegrayzone.com/2023/09/06/ukraines-arms-supplier-maidan-massacre/
- Poroshenko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHWHqj8g7Bk
Essentially, killing civilians, torturing prisoners, shelling civilian areas, similar tactics to the IDF with respect to the Donbass. Makes sense considering Israel and Ukraine occupy similar roles for western imperialism, both are staunch allies, and both are run by fascists.
Wow, it’s like I’m on reddit all over again. Propaganda hits hard.
Can you elaborate? Since when did Reddit have a sizable communist userbase?
I said the absolute contrary. There’s nothing communist about Russia nowadays. It’s as capitalist as it gets.
Of course Russia is no longer socialist. My point is that what I said is the standard communist stance on the Russian Federation, that of critical support.
No way!!! No one told us!!!
You are the master of fractal wrongness.
You’re overthinking it, my comment was purely about the picture you posted
And the picture was about the issue at hand
Nope, it wasn’t.
You know the meme with the donkey with swirly eyes screaming “RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA”?
That’s what the picture reminded me of.
Nobody who understands how elections work would ever post this.
It’s embarassing, and quite obviously centered around Zelenskyy, with also unfair title, as if it’s his fault.
It’s not, fuck you and anyone who defends this.
And yes, the whole ML is such a sad excuse of a russian propaganda.
If there was ever a psyop to bury any chance of a communist revolution, this is it.
Why would Marxism-Leninism be a psyop to prevent communist revolution when it’s been by far the most successful ideology and methodology for establishing socialism in history?
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I wasn’t aware that intergalactic law required all elections to include Vladimir Putin on the ballot. And are you suggesting everybody would vote for him if he was an option?
Yes, I think they are trying to say people would vote pro-russian (which they did, hence the maidan coup), but Putin bad because no democracy, so therefore Ukraine had to get rid of democracy, to save democracy. Perfectly good lib logic.
I’m so tired of doing a poll at work for where to get lunch and Putin winning.
He does make a good borscht.
Putin is Democratic or what.
Putin was chosen by Russian oligarchs after the second sovereign default in 10 years.
He used to carry luggage for the mayor of St Petersburg, Sobchak.
An Islamic caliphate started a civil war in the South of Russia before he was chosen, this is why Russian oligarchs needed a man with a military backgound.
At least he isnt winning at the polls with 140% of the vote
He’s not winning at the polls at all!
With these numbers, they should be holding new elections.
Though I do agree,
the opinion numbers should be put side at side with election numbers
to showcase how little these politicians care about approval rates once in power.
