Interesting Shares

Sounds like you envy a lot more about it than just the ability to leave.

True, but that doesn't mean I want to live in Russia. It's just ridiculous to fight for what our people get and how our government treats us vs country that gives their people more and treats their people better. Countries aren't something that has inherent self-worth after all, the whole concept of states was supposed to be a tool to make people live better.

But it’s hard for me to interpret this combination any other way than that the “muscles” were helping it succeed

Those "muscles" played central role in making it succeed, people alone couldn't do it. Civilians in general are really bad at violence, especially in eastern europe. I was a student back then, and I didn't know a single person among my classmates or relatives or their contacts who went to Maidan.

and it wasn’t a genuine people’s movement.

It's "genuine" in a sense there is definitely something upsetting people and at the right time forces come in to drive that energy of people into revolution. The point is, it doesn't happen to most of things upsetting people. Since then we've many times had 100x more reasons for another Maidan, but there were no forces investing into "muscles" during long timeframes that were interested in our upset at those moments to overthrow government again. West is way more interested in dealing maximum damage to Russia at the cost of lives of ukrainians than saving lives of ukrainians. Also West thinks that if we become Russia it would just mean that Russia became stronger and it's better to just kill us all to prevent Russia from getting us. It's understandable point of view, but we as ukrainians are not interested in it.