Comments by "Stephen Hill" (@stephenhill545) on "Putin takes questions from Russian people in end-of-year phone-in" video.

  1. The forerunner of Ukraine, the USSR, came into being by way of a coup initiated by the Bolsheviks after performing rather disappointingly in the country's first free elections in 1917. According to your logic it was not a legitimate state, along with almost every state in the world, since almost every state in the world has experienced the overthrow of its government at some point in its history. Indeed, if Russia had not done so in the 15th century, it woukd not exist at all. It would still be a Mongolan colony. Janukowitch actually abandoned his post and fled to Moscow, as Assad has done, fearing the personal consrquences of breaking his promise to the Ukranian people in 2010 to move further towards EU membership. He did, in fact, ignore his democratic mandate to sign the EU accession treaty, so the people had the right to be rather angry, which they were. But the interesting question for you is; if rebellion is illegimate, then strictly speaking, you should say sorry to Mongolia for rebelling and ask to rejoin.
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