Re: Ukraine's deep dive into Nazism Apologism
Well, there likely are eu countries that are more into nazi apologism than Ukraine. Possibly those (other) ones which allied with Hitler and/or saw him as liberator. Ie the north baltic nations, Croatia and Hungary.
Aren't the Ustashe seen as national heroes in Croatia? And they were full nazi.
Re: Ukraine's deep dive into Nazism Apologism
Oh, Poroshenko isn't a Nazi. He's an opportunist. If you have no achievements, if your country has become worse by all measurements, then you do have to play the nationalist card.
He's playing it and he's playing it hard.
In his first election he played a very different one. That of the moderate guy.
There's an argument to be had that he had considerable Russian support throughout a considerable part of his tenure, and there's this conspiracy theory (with perhaps some grain of truth to it) that he deliberately contributed to those heavy defeats inflicted on the Ukrainian "army" by the "Russians"/"separatists"/"rebels" to have the various nationalist militias weakened to bring them under control.
He also let rival oligarchs such as Kolomoisky do his thing do his thing for a while.
Until those were no longer needed.
His rise to power mirrored that of Putin in many ways, who also discarded of various oligarch former supporters as soon as he no longer had a need for them (such as Berezovskyi, Khodorkovskyi and the Yeltsin clan).
Speaking of Russia: It has remained the most significant trade partner for the Ukraine, and has even been rising. The increase in trade with Russia is the one thing that also had the GDP stabilise somewhat.
Poroshenko has done nothing to change anything about that dependency, even though he's proudly been claiming exactly that.
E.g. one of his claims no longer be buying any gas from Russia. In reality, it's Russia that ceased selling it directly to the Ukrainians, who therefore have to pay its western neighbours a premium. Those countries don't produce that gas and don't have to do anything except order more from Russia. Ukraine then siphons a corresponding amount of gas from the pipelines, which never even reaches the nominal exporters.
Anyway, the unfortunate reality is that Zelenskyi is unlikely to change anything. Ukraine will continue to depend on Russia just like it will continue to be controlled by the US.