New Economist Report Shows The Ukraine War Did Not "Save Democracy".

Far from "Preserving Democracy" in Ukraine, A New Article From The Economist Shows The Proxy War Actually Harmed Democracy In The Country.

The official narrative, from the Biden administration and Western states, was that the Ukraine proxy war needed to be fueled in order to “save democracy” in Ukraine.

For example, in 2023, Joe Biden justified the continuation of the Ukraine proxy war on the grounds that it would be in the name of “the defense of freedom”.

He even bragged in his farewell address that “Ukraine is still free”, because of his proxy war in Ukraine.

As I documented in my recent lengthy article, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was provoked by the West through NATO expansion and the 2014 Maidan coup.

It has also been well documented that the West sent former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to block a peace deal that would have ended the war in April of 2022.

While claiming this was all done in the name of “preserving Ukraine’s democracy,” anyone paying attention to the situation on the ground in Ukraine would know that it has caused the country to be far more authoritarian and far less democratic.

Since the war started, the Ukrainian government has banned opposition media and political parties, suspended elections, jailed political dissidents, and forced young Ukrainians to fight on the front lines through a brutal draft.

Despite these facts all being well documented, the mainstream media has covered it up, pretending that the West’s proxy war was saving democracy in Ukraine, while in reality it was destroying it.

Recently, there have been some admissions in the official papers of neo-liberal elites that the mainstream narrative around Ukraine was bogus.

The New York Times recently published a lengthy investigation that admitted that the United States ran the Ukrainian side of the war from a base in Germany, that the war almost caused World War III with Russia, and even admitted that it was “a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars”.

Now, the Economist magazine has put out an article titled “Power is being monopolised in Ukraine,” admitting that the war has actually hollowed out any semblance of Democracy in the country.

Admissions In The Economist Piece.

The piece begins by admitting that Ukraine will not be able to win the war, noting that “Ukraine still cannot make systems capable of knocking out incoming Russian missiles” and that “mobilisation has been mishandled: troops’ rotations away from the front are infrequent; draft agents seize people arbitrarily; and the government has hesitated to lower the age of conscription.”

However, the piece notes that “Ukraine’s worst fragility” is “not military but political,” noting that Volodymyr Zelensky has “increased monopoly of power”.

The piece quotes Ukrainian journalist Yulia Mostovaya, who said “While the Western media and European leaders have lionised Zelensky and turned him into a celebrity, we feel trapped”. This quote was shared on X approvingly by Zelensky’s former press secretary, Iuliia Mendel.

The report notes that the Ukrainian state “appears to be tightening its grip” on political opponents in “preparation for the possibility” of Elections.

The article quotes a Ukrainian official saying, “If Zelensky feels he has no competitors, that means elections are approaching”.

The article notes that Ukraine has even cracked down on pro-Western politicians such as the former Western-backed president and current opposition leader, Petro Poroshenko, writing:

In February Petro Poroshenko, who leads the largest opposition party, was penalised for unspecified ‘threats to national security’. His assets have been frozen. He is also being charged with ‘treason’ in a legal case which looks to critics like lawfare. The sanctions in effect bar him from contesting any election. However many Ukrainians may dislike Mr Poroshenko, many see this as a dangerous precedent. ‘If Poroshenko can be barred from an electoral process without any court decision, so can anyone else,’ says Olexiy Honcharenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada.

The report also noted that “civil-society activists are also being harassed”, citing the example of “Vitaly Shabunin”, “an anti-corruption crusader, who had enlisted in the first days of the war while also exposing graft in Ukraine’s defence ministry” and has “long been targeted”.

The article notes that “his latest investigation was met with snide vengeance,” noting that he has “been sent close to the front” to “punish him” for reporting on corruption.

Vitaly Shabunin is even quoted in the article saying, “Such methods recall Vladimir Putin’s early years of rule, at least in their pettiness”.

The report notes that in Ukraine, “power is being concentrated not in the government or the parliament, but in the hands of a few unelected officials in the presidential administration”.

The article admits that “The administration is reluctant to share power not just with opponents but with anyone seen as a potential rival. Loyalists are rewarded with seats on the boards of state firms. Those who show too much independence, have too much popular support, or enjoy direct lines of communication to Western countries have been fired or sidelined.”

This also goes for the media. The article notes that “differences of opinion and critical media are seen as a threat, rather than a strength” by the Ukrainian government.

The report quotes Sevgil Musaeva, the head of the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, who said, “Instead of dealing with the reasons that prompt journalistic investigations, the presidential office responds by restricting access, targeting advertisers and seeing any contact with its journalists as treachery”.

The article concludes that far from saving democracy, the Ukraine war has caused the country to “move towards more authoritarian rule”.

Whitewashing the U.S. Role

One of the interesting aspects of the more recent mainstream media reports admitting some truths about the Ukraine war is that they pin all the problems on the Ukrainian government, absolving the West of blame.

The New York Times piece on Ukraine sourcing American officials attempted to claim that Ukraine would have won if they only listened to the West.

As Journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, American officials “used the Times to deflect blame from their own failures onto erstwhile Slavic partners, cast as ignorant savages who snatched defeat from the jaws of America-designed victory”.

The inference from the Times piece is that the United States and NATO did everything right and would have won the war had Ukraine not fucked it up.

The Economist piece attempts to paint a similar narrative, absolving the West from blame in Ukraine's increasing authoritarianism.

The article claims that Ukraine was more democratic because of Western-funded NGOs, writing, “Ukraine’s democracy was never really based on the rule of law. Its pluralism was provided by the diversity of its regions, the competing interests of its power groups, and a vocal civil society that relied on the support of Western embassies and the media.”

In reality, Western funding in Ukraine did the exact opposite of supporting democracy and the diversity of Ukraine’s regions.

In 2014, the U.S. spent hundreds of thousands of dollars funding think-tanks in Ukraine, such as “New Citizen,” that launched protests against the then democratically elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

The protests were eventually taken over by far-right forces such as the “Right Sector” paramilitary group, which was supported by the West, including through members of the Senate and the State Department standing along with them.

Eventually, Yanukovych was overthrown in a coup by Right Sector and other far-right groups after they blamed Viktor Yanukovych for a sniper massacre of 48 protestors.

Subsequent witness testimony, forensic examination, and video evidence have proved that the massacre was carried out by Right Sector from a hotel they were occupying called “Hotel Ukraina”.

This coup was supported by the West all the way. Economist Jeffrey Sachs has said American officials bragged that American funding of think tanks led to the coup when he visited Ukraine in the aftermath.

The American senator Chris Murphy admitted that American involvement “helped lead to this change in regime” in Ukraine.

The United States installed Arseniy Yatseniuk as the interim Prime Minister of Ukraine because he agreed to implement the IMF policies that Yanukovych rejected.

Along with Yatsenyuk, multiple far-right militia members took up top posts in Ukraine's new coup government.

When members of a far-right militia trapped pro-Russia Ukrainians in a burning building, the new government intentionally “failed to ensure timely rescue measures,” killing 42 people, according to a recent ruling from an EU court.

The court found that the new coup government even “deliberately delayed the deployment of fire engines to the site, for 40 minutes,” ensuring that the people trapped in the building would be killed.

U.S.-funded NGOs such as Stop Fake put out propaganda whitewashing and defending these far-right groups.

This eventually led to a full-scale civil war in Eastern Ukraine between nationalist and pro-Russia militia groups.

When Zelensky attempted to end the war through a negotiated peace settlement called the Minsk Accords in 2019, he was prevented from doing so by “threats and blackmail by far-right military circles”.

The West once again sided with the far-right military circles over the elected president of Ukraine, who ran on a platform of ending the war.

Far from “supporting democracy,” the West actually supported far-right groups that did a coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected government, committed multiple massacres, and blocked a popular peace deal that would have ended the war they started.

While it is nice to see mainstream media admit some truths about Ukraine, the Economist piece yet again, unfortunately, whitewashed the American and Western puppet masters who were really behind the problems.

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