True democracy is when lifetime officials at the US Department of State approve of your government.
I wondered if the guys who did the poll for Zelensky might have some baseball bats with a rusted nail or chains if someone they asked got a negative opinion of Zelensky?Oh so now we're talking about approval ratings, not votes received? Sorry I didn't realise the government changed every time a new opinion poll came out but feel free to shift those goal posts some more!
Also I'm gonna be a real prick here and point out that 20% is not 15%.
Edit: also I can play the approval rating game too!
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Whether a democracy allows meaningful choice or is just a facade for deeper interests and oligarchs isn't a quibble, ignoring it would leave you with the conclusion that parts of Africa or even Russia is democratic because there's some kind of elections going on which on paper have multiple candidates. If, as in the case of Ukraine, it's a facade for modern-day robber barons and foreign powers to play power games where there's zero insurance theory so the winner sends his predecessor and his associates to prison, then it's not a 'real' democracy.
But keep in mind that the force driving all those opinions in the west is a collection of Russian monsters (the Oligarchs who looted Russia under Yeltsin) who mostly live in London now. They literally consider Russia to be their personal property and they want it back. A whole lot of bad policy across most of the west originates with those people and how they use their money.
>Vladimir Putin's cruise missiles 'could reach UK in an hour'
Yes, this is the same lot that threw a temper tantrum when he said riots weren't a good idea and then picked a cop as his VP.
Zelensky said today that the talks are "progressing" and that there is now "actual dialogue instead of throwing ultimatums at each other", for what it's worth. No date for the next official peace netotiations was provided, however.
The Golden Horde survived until 1502. The Hunnic Empire barely last Atilla's lifetime, although the Huns long survived as foes or hirelings of the Romans and Persian. They'd be the more incompetent.
Polls for rating approval when not in an election season is usually useless information because people aren't rating the candidate against alternatives, they're rating it against their optimal scenario. In fact Zelensky likely wouldn't be replaced by someone more friendly to the Russians, a good percentage of the people who had a negative view of Zelensky viewed him as a liberal jewish pansy trying to be too friendly with the Russians. In election polls in late 2021 the two people closest in opinion polls to Zelensky were Poroshenko and Tymoshenko, both of them conservative hardliners and actively courting the nationalist bloc. A russophile candidate has never had higher approval than the nationalists since 2014.
Well if Russians are to be believed, Azov is getting bombed right now and gone into hiding among civies.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Of course America was never going to directly engage Russia. That was never an option, no matter what happens. In fact, Biden doesn't really have any options. Sitting with his thumbs up his ass while blowing smoke out of it is the only thing he can do.
