para bellum
Platinum Member
I want to further this. I am not wanting anyone fighting and killing. I blame Russia for the fighting and killing, because those were Russian tanks driving into Ukraine without provocation.If you don't care if Ukraine is corrupt. What are you wanting them fighting and killed for.
What I was talking about wrt the corruption- Ukraine is not a western liberal democracy. They are trying to move in that direction. The country is run by oligarchs, the system is a devolution of the former State-owned enterprises which were privatized, and they went to people who were powerful and influential in the previous order.
It has to take time for that system to further devolve. Those big enterprises are not particularly productive or competitive against modern western companies so they need political favors. A lot of the wealth gets siphoned off, same thing the Russian oligarchs do.
If there is political will- and in Ukraine they have shown it, that kind of structure will self-reform. It will take a generation or two, but it has only one direction to go. The companies will modernize, etc. Ukraine was well on that path, Kiev was a popular center for high-tech companies before the war.
That's why I don't just write Ukraine off as hopelessly corrupt, who cares what happen to them. I think they deserve a chance to realize a better future. I never saw Ukraine bullying their neighbors, or threatening anyone.
I know they were used as pawns by Obama and the dems (and the UK was in on it), and that was not right. But that was before Zelensky's time, whatever water went under that bridge is past. If anyone was a western pawn, it was Poroshenko, and Zelensky beat him in an election (that at least the US, did not meddle in).