It actually wasn’t. Had rebels overrun the parliament and set up their own regime it would have been an illegal coup. Yanukovych’s parliament and party decided to impeach him which they have the constitutional authority to do. It was a legal transfer of power.
Sometimes foreign soldiers are the good guys, sometimes they are not, in this case they are not.
Certainly, however there actually are people who claim that the American Revolution was treasonous, historians that is, but whether one considers it illegal or not none of them conflate the situation of a colony under imperial rule with actually being a region of a sovereign state. They are different legal situations. Being a colony in an empire where you are not represented and are taxed without representation is very different from being part of a sovereign nation-state.
josie, it depends on what the natives think. The Soviets said (and believed) they were the good guys in 1939 when they came to rescue Poland from Hitler.
No, Russia had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler and even was interested in joining the Axis alliance (but was denied it). It invaded and occupied part of Poland supposedly to protect ethnic Russians living there, not Poles. Incidentally, Putin is doing the same thing that Stalin did.
But it comes down to the same thing. Both actions would be just as illegal and both groups of instigators would hang. In both cases armed soldiers would fire on such people.
That’s not entirely true. They were also “protecting” the Polish workers, proletariat. They thought they were doing the right thing. There is video footage of Polish soldiers being disarmed and commentary is along the lines of “these people can now go back home and no longer have to suffer under their old masters” or something similar to that. It definitely wasn’t a case of just protecting Russians.
But you’re not getting it Tenofovir, what choice did the Ukrainians have, i.e., the current government knew that ousting Moscow’s puppet, whether now or later, was going to make Russia mad, and thus seek retribution one way or another, i.e., Putin does not want the Ukraine to become part of Europe and ruin his plans for a Eurasian union. You think it’s as easy as saying they should have waited to oust Yanukovych in order to form a new (and legal) government, and I am saying “bull”, Yanukovych would have find a way to stay in power because Russia would have continued backing him.
At least the moral right would be more with the West.
The local Crimean government was ousted by “pro-Russian” gunmen, i.e., Russian soldiers, it was then replaced with a government that was for a pro-Russian union, i.e., Crimea was invaded by a foreign country even before the new “elected” government of Crimea asked for help.
And how does this help the Ukrainians, who, for the most part (two thirds) supported the ousting of Yanukovych?
Oh Tenofovir, the Soviets were only interested in power, no less than the Nazis, so whatever, you may say about them wanting to do the “right thing” I would classify as straight up propaganda (including that video you refer to).
I think it rather odd that you seem to be defending Stalin’s Soviet Union when it was a totalitarian regime and in the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Russia and Germany had agreed to divide up Eastern Europe into separate spheres of influence. Stalin in invading Poland was putting that plan into action in 1939. Russia next invaded Finnland in December 1939 and Lithuania and Latvia in 1940.
Here is the article:
The “natives” in this case were still part of the Ukraine, and were being force fed lies by Russia. Is it any surprise that the Russian ethnics would as a result of the manufactured lies think they were better off being a part of Russia (it’s not like they had anything else to counter the lies once Russia occupied Crimea and abolished Ukrainian news sources from airing).
I’m not defending anyone. I’m saying that the Russian soldiers who invaded Poland thought they were doing the right thing.
I’m not making any such argument. I’m saying foreign soldiers do not negate the outcome of a referendum. Point- Afghanistan, Iraq and most Eastern Bloc nations which voted the Commies out at the first opportunity despite having Soviet and their own Communist controlled soldiers and security officials.Stalin’s Russia is not a good example to use, I can assure you it doesn’t help your arguement