sombear said:
Sam Lowry said:
I have a lot of issues with the Chinese invasion scenario, but we seem to agree that it would constitute banning a church. The fact that people could go to another church doesn't change the nature of the thing. I've posted articles about the violence and other indignities inflicted on UOC churches, including the planting of evidence to incriminate them for "actively helping Putin." The UOC's relationship to Russia and the war is more complex than we're led to believe. Even if the dubious accusations against some clerics are true, total suppression of a thousand-year-old institution is a grossly excessive response.
The fact that there's been no organized effort to end martial law or hold elections means very little considering that Zelensky has also banned every viable or semi-viable opposition party and is now in the process of arresting every political rival in sight, including our friend Poroshenko. Ukraine's WPF ranking is actually lower than it was in 2021, and even that understates the problem. The more unpopular the regime becomes, the more journalists seem to sound the alarm about restrictions on the press. And those are the ones who haven't died in prison.
We'll never agree on the UOC or elections, which is fine. But your wrong about the free press rankings. It's improved every year since 2021. And of course, where Ukraine is ranked in the 50s, Russia is in the 180s.
And Ukraine has not banned more opposition parties, just the initial ban, and those politicians are still politically active. I posted multiple articles last week about significant opposition, but they happen to agree with Zelensky major war-related decisions.
I'm not trying to take the easy way out on the mistreatment of UOC priest/members. I just don't have any intel on that and don't trust the media on either side. For example, I've seen UOC priests interviewed who said they disagreed with the ban but have been treated just fine and unaware of mistreatment elsewhere. Yet, I also read your posts. I'll stick to what I said earlier. I have no doubt some of that is happening. I think if it were prevalent, there would be more attention given to it.
We may be looking different rankings. The World Press Freedom Index had Ukraine at 67 in 2021, 55 in 2022, 61 in 2023, and 65 in 2024. So it took a big drop at the beginning of the war and has yet to fully recover.
Western media coverage of war crimes by the US and its allies is about the last thing I would expect to see. We didn't learn much from Vietnam, but we did learn not to let that happen. There's practically no first hand reporting of any kind, and Western outlets mostly just repeat official statements from Kiev.