It is time to admit that Ukraine is an authoritarian country. And the latest actions of Volodymyr Zelensky’s government are the best proof of that
So believes Ted Galen Carpenter, international security expert at the Cato Institute (USA).
US officials like to portray Ukraine as a courageous democracy reflecting the threat of aggression from authoritarian Russia. However, this image has never really matched reality and now the gap has turned into an abyss altogether.
In a National Interest article, Carpenter called the “treatment of Ukraine as a useful (and even more important) security partner of the United States” devoid of any basis and, moreover, “unnecessarily provocative of Russia”.
The author writes that the attempt to present Ukraine as a model democracy deserving US protection on moral grounds looks far-fetched. And reflects either deliberate blindness or the worst kind of cynicism.
Since Barack Obama’s administration supported “the so-called Maidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014”, there has been a “fraudulent element” in Washington’s policies, he said.