They purged roughly 10% - 12% of the opposition by parliament seats, yeah - that means it is at least that much less democratic. I’m just stating facts here. This isn’t a strong defense of the democratic values of Ukraine, just a statement that they aren’t wholly undemocratic as suggested in the meme - it’s misleading.

I agree that the situation isn’t treated with nuance, typically, by westerners. But in this case, this isn’t particularly nuanced or naïve - it’s just a statement of fact that the parliament has voted repeatedly to extend martial law.

That doesn’t mean Ukraine is a super-democratic country. It only means that it is the case that the government, made up of elected representatives (and yes, Ukraine banned 11 political parties for alleged Russian ties - one of them with ~10% of parliamentary seats - so the representativeness of the legislature is certainly debatable) has voted to not allow presidential elections until the war is over.

Obviously it’d take a much longer explanation to capture all of the relevant geopolitical context, but this is a factually accurate statement about what is happening, yes?

Referendum was incorrect. It was just a vote by the legislature, so elected representatives. I had seen Referendum used in some source, but I forget where.

On 26 February 2025, after a previous failed vote on a similar resolution,[27] the Verkhovna Rada passed a resolution reaffirming that elections should not be held during martial law, and also pledged to hold a presidential election upon the conclusion of the Russo-Ukrainian War.[28] On 6 March 2025 opposition politicians Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, after having confirmed that they had held discussions with United States representatives, confirmed that they still opposed elections held during wartime.[29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Ukrainian_presidential_election

To be fair, they’re (understandably) under martial law which has been extended in 90 day increments since 2022 with parliamentary approval. Elections aren’t to be held under martial law per Ukranian law, and there have been referenda to determine if elections should be held, which failed.

Guy Extinguishi

My thought recently has been:

1. The universe is physical, ie made of material stuff. There is just stuff and the forces between stuff

2. Stuff is governed by physical laws

3. The interractions between things are relatively simple, but get much more complex and seemingly ramdom the more stuff you add

4. This seeming randomness is not true randomness because the interractions between things are governed by predictable rules

5. We are made of stuff, down to the neurons in our brains

6. Our actions and thoughts are ultimately directly caused by neuronal activity that is (in theory) predictable and governed by laws

7. Free will and individuality aren’t “real” in the way people typically mean. Our actions are determined entirely by the particles in our system interracting with the constituent parts of other systems.

My conclusion: this doesn’t matter on a practical level. We still experience free will and individuality. But those things are illusions caused by the interractions of many complex systems.

I was agreeing with you

The framing and double-standard is chauvinist and bad.

But there are reasons to be skeptical of suicide stats worldwide due to cultural ideas and norms around suicide. Like, look at the US. It was common practice for coroners to put accident as cause of death even if it was clearly suicide - and still is, to some degree. Only recently have statisticians began including certain other cases of “accidental” death as suicide (some single car crashes, gun “accidents”, ODs, etc).

And different countries have different methods for reporting out on suicide. It’s not founded to say countries are intentionally skewing suicide stats, but it would be constructive to be skeptical about how those figures were arrived at before believing memes without citations.