Why is Ukraine not Russia?

Ukraine has always been a kind of Switzerland among the CIS countries. Everywhere in the countries of the former USSR there were dictatorships with endless persecution of dissidents, torture of people, restrictions on rights and freedoms and other attractions of totalitarian regimes.

Only in Ukraine has a relatively democratic zone been preserved for a long time. Even many “progressive” anarchists have called for going to the anti-terrorist operation zone, because Russia’s regime is worse than Ukraine’s, and if Russia wins, all protest movements will face terrible repression, which will greatly complicate any further development. Of course, the regime in Ukraine is milder than its neighbors, not because our officials are more humane and more worried about us. They are the same vile creatures, and sometimes worse. The whole secret lies in the activity of Ukrainian society. Throughout its short history of independence, Ukraine has survived two waves of mining revolutions in 1994 and 1998, mass protests against Kuchma, and two Maidans, all of which have prevented dictatorship from gaining a foothold. Ukrainians did not even allow the first president Kravchuk to serve until the end of his term. Since the end of the last Ukrainian Revolution in 2014, we have witnessed a decline in protest activity. The war began and state propaganda began to work, all protest movements were labeled provocateurs and “Kremlin agents”, and we heard everywhere that we should never protest — we must fight. And the people themselves began to be disappointed in the eternal protests. After all, everyone went to the Maidan in the hope of a better future, and won the war and the growth of poverty.

As protests erupted and under the cover of corrupt journalists, officials began to attack. Initially, police reform was carried out, which strengthened the position of police officers and increased budgeting. And then repression began against dissidents, of course under the guise of fighting separatism. And so we lived to see the SBU allow itself to beat people and openly ignore the law, cooperating with the FSB and KGB in repression. Despite its foreign policy against Russia, Ukraine’s domestic policy is moving closer to the same regime.

If people do not oppose this, then when those who went to the front to fight Russia return, they will face the same authoritarian regime at home.