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So please stop with this new found interest in the "sovereignty" of US client states. We have tape recordings of US state department officials deciding who will be in the Ukrainian cabinet and who wont, of what their policies can and can't be. One phone call from Washington and there is a third coup in Ukraine with Zelensky out the door and another US puppet installed. So Ukraine has zero sovereignty, and that's true regardless of what happens in this war. The only question is whether it will continue to be ruled from Washington or whether it will be ruled from Moscow. That is why this is a US-Russia proxy war, with Ukraine stuck in the middle.

Knowing stuff like this is table stakes for participating in the discussion. See, for example, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-ukraine-tape/leaked-a...

> Zelensky was elected in an election, I know you likely don’t know this so I just thought you should know.

In an environment in which rival political parties were banned, torture centers were established, death squads were roaming the streets arresting dissidents, etc, and there was strict control of media.

But in some sense elections in client states don't matter. Zelensky was elected on a peace platform and immediately was forced to abandon his stance on implementing Minsk 2 when he got into power - 70% of the population wanted it implemented. Minsk 2 was the agreement Ukraine signed with Russia to avoid war. Minsk 2, which was brokered by the EU after the violent anti-Russian Maidan coup. It called on Ukraine to grant autonomy to Donbas and to respect the rights of the Russians living there. It also called on Ukraine to recognize Russian control over Crimea. In return, the Donbas provinces would return to Ukraine and Russia would recognize the coup government, and there would be no war. Poroshenko stated he had no intention of ever implementing Minsk 2, but signed it to buy time for Ukraine to arm itself to fight a war with Russia. US Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham visited Ukraine and urged them to defeat Russia in the war. This was 2015. The US was clear that Minsk 2 would never be implemented by Ukraine and that it was just a lie to buy time as they geared up for war.

So in a place like Ukraine, it doesn't matter who is elected as long as the US controls the country. Zelensky was elected on a peace platform and pro-Minsk 2 platform, and immediately changed his position after the election. This is something you should also research if you want to be informed.

> The choice is clear, being ruled by Moscow which leads to the rape and torture of your civilians(including children), or being ruled by America which leads to not that.

No, it is the Maidan regime that set up SBU torture centers, burned people alive, buried people alive, funded various Neo-Nazi groups like Aidar, Right Sektor, Azov, banned the use of Russian language, disappeared pro-Russian citizens, banned pro-Russian parties, banned pro-Hungarian parties, etc, and they were committing and continue to commit mass atrocities. There were many articles by Amnesty International and other human rights groups about this.

> Russia keeps changing the reasons they invaded the current reasons have nothing to with America but I’m sure they will change next week.

This is just made up nonsense. Putin gave a speech explaining the reasons for the invasion - the liberation of pro-Russian Donbas region, preventing Ukraine from hosting NATO troops/bases, and the denazification of the country. These were the three reasons. You can try listening to this speech rather than making up your own reasons, and then listening to his other speeches across time (he gives many speeches about Ukraine), and seeing if there is a change. He has been fairly consistent -- much to the anger of the Russian population which wants a far more hardline position on Ukraine, particularly in light of all the ethnic cleansing and atrocities committed by this US client regime. I would say, however, that as the war drags on, there is a real chance that Ukraine will end up partitioned into nothing, which is an object lesson to other regimes that wish to be U.S. clients. This is probably why Taiwan kicked out the pro-US party in the recent elections -- they don't want to be a battering ram the US uses against China and then discards when their powerful neighbor attacks them. Again, in all of this, it is Ukrainian people that suffer, whether they be of Russian, Hungarian, Polish, or Ukrainian ethnicity. The US doesn't treat its client states very humanely.

But I take it that now we agree on the larger point that this proxy war has nothing to do with "sovereignty".

[citation needed]

> We currently have troops in Syria extracting oil

We have a few troops in Syria, but while the Syrian regime and its allies continue to claim the thing about stealing oil, no evidence of any kind has been offered to support that that has been happening since Biden ended the Trump policy around oil extraction.

> We just tried to overthrew the government of Ethopia by backing the Tigray rebels.

No, we didn’t. In fact, the US government has condemned abuses by all sides, including the TPLF, and sanctioned actors on all sides, including in the TPLF, for abuses in the conflict.

> We overthrew the government of Ukraine twice, in 2004 and 2013.

We didn’t overthrow the government of Ukraine at all. The main organized, non-grassroots actor in the overthrow of the regime that stole the 2004 election appears to have been the Ukrainian security services.

> We overthrew the government of Iraq

The first not-lie in your entire recitation.

> and are financing violent rebels to overthrow the government of Myanmar.

Myanmar has…quite a variety of different internal conflicts and rebellions, but while a number of actors have urged the US to back forces working against the regime that recently seized power in a coup, it is not doing so.

> Only strong, large nations that can stand up to the US and other rival great powers have any hope of achieving sovereignty. Ukraine has never had it.

I dunno, Ukraine’s doing a pretty good job of standing up to a supposed great power right now (and its only getting substantial Western aid in doing that now because it initially did much better than anyone expected without it.)

> The only question is whether it will continue to be ruled from Washington or whether it will be ruled from Moscow.

No, the only question is whether the Putin regime will give up its imperial ambitions before it collapses, or because it collapses.