You don't seem to understand what an invasion does to a country. This is an existential fight. Any country fighting for swaths of its territory is forced into authoritarianism and hopefully bounces back once things stabilize, but don't blame them for trying to survive. Blame Russia for forcing this state of affairs.
You are talking about liberal democracy, right? Because regular democracy doesn't contain this important bit.
However, even in case of liberal democracy, there is exception from the rule in case of war, because SOMEONE WILL DIE ANYWAY.
If you think that liberal government cannot send a men X to the front line, then government must sent a men Y, or accept that woman or children Z will die. Someone will die anyway. Moreover, if the men Y sent to front line where he can die from enemy action, or woman or children Z dies from enemy action, why the men X should be exempt from that?
I share your disappointment at virtually every Western country no longer being democratic. Indeed, suppression of basic freedom of movement, speech, association, rights to earn one's living and even going as far as freezing one's assets and confining people to their homes, without them being convicted of any crime, proves conclusively countries like US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, etc. are no longer democracies. Ukraine would do well to follow example of democratic countries - but unfortunately, almost none left in existence.
“Is never okay” is not a rational argument in any philosophical or legal framework. You are projecting theoretically pure ideas into the real world where they don’t exist in any pure form.
Ukraine was Soviet Socialist for most of the 20th century, so any positive democratic movement is an improvement. In 2014, the people overturned a highly Russia-aligned and corrupt government (for which Russia invaded Crimea and fomented a rebellion in the Donbas). Zelenskyy was elected on a populist anti-corruption platform (again, further movement towards democracy).
The party bans you mention happened within a month after Moscow invaded Ukraine with eyes on the capital. And every single banned party was Socialist-leaning + most likely closer aligned with Russia than Ukraine. Again, not exactly a huge regression when it comes to democracy. The sad fact is that Ukraine has never been highly democratic. The post-2014 trend is towards more individual freedom and less government corruption (as far as I can tell, not speaking the local language).
Your standards are a great example of “perfect should not be enemy of the good”, much like the original US Articles of Confederation, which only lasted a few years.
Ukraine is not democratic and never has been. We are talking about a spectrum where one end is fully democratic (values). 1991 to 2004 to 2008 to 2014 to 2019 to 2022 have been moving towards the democratic end of the spectrum (except perhaps 2008 to 2014, but the country remains heavily corrupt (the same reason the EU and NATO were not serious about accepting UA).
The 2014 coup was followed by massive popular protests. The voters demanded president Viktor Yanukovych leave office and significant government + constitutional change and more independence from being under Russian influence and oligarch control. Popular protests don’t happen just because foreign money is thrown at the issue.
You pretend like the pre-2014 elections were “Democratic” in any sense of fair elections. You should go back and read about the 2004 UA Presidential Election and the findings of the UA Supreme Court, which overturned the election and forced a redo.
The UK cancelled elections in 1940 due to WW2. Is the UK a dictatorship?
Even the EU has set policy standards for what conditions merit dissolution of specific political parties[1]. And when UA dissolves those parties, the dissolutions were upheld by the court (so the UA was not far off of EU standards for the same action.
Again, UA took some pretty extreme anti-democratic measures towards domestic political allies of RU after they were invaded by RU and after those same political parties had been supporting the violent rebellion in the Donbas region since 2014. I don’t think your standards are reasonable.
Yes. As happens in every single existential war because it is necessary to survive. It is truly a dark time when it's more important to suspend rights than to keep them, but that is what an invasion does. It shifts priority from more privileged things like having a good life, to trying to survive so that you can have a life in the first place. It might be hard to imagine coming from a life of peace, but this is one of the many reasons why war is despicable and why Russia should never have started it. The blame falls squarely on Russia's shoulders imo.
Democracy (as in will of the people) doesn’t really exist during wars on domestic soil. Martial Law declarations are at least the honest admission of that.
And the democracy / republic pedantry is tiresome. We are a Democratic Republic (and also a Constitutional Republic). They are not mutually exclusive.
> And the democracy / republic pedantry is tiresome. We are a Democratic Republic
We’re a functionally plutocratic federal republic with some very loosely representative-democratic elements. Ironically, as a result of federal rules imposed on the states but not on the federal government itself, like one-person, one-vote, the states, while still more than a little plutocratic in practice, do a better job of approximating representative democracy in their formal structures (and many also have elements of direct democracy.)
