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Comment by yetihehe | Hacker News Reader

> The clear purpose in leaking this conversation is to embarrass Washington and for audiences susceptible to Moscow's message to portray the US as interfering in Ukraine's domestic affairs.

THE whole argument of this one and similar "leaks" is "interfering in Ukraine's domestic affairs". Ukrainians see it a little differently: "helping Ukraine escape Russia". But Russia sees it as "helping Ukraine escape Russia, thus interfering in Russia's domestic affairs". When Russians say that someone is "interfering in Ukraine's domestic affairs" they mean that Ukraine is Russian and should not be touched by anyone other than Russia.

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Yes, interesting introduction since the entire article is about the proof of US meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs.

Also the article:

> The US says that it is working with all sides in the crisis to reach a peaceful solution, noting that "ultimately it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide their future". However this transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals

> Various officials attempting to marshal the Ukrainian opposition [...] US Vice-President Joe Biden clearly being lined up to give private words of encouragement at the appropriate moment.

> the US expresses frustration at the EU's efforts. Washington and Brussels have not been completely in step during the Ukraine crisis. The EU is divided and to some extent hesitant about picking a fight with Moscow.

The year is 2014

You present every quote to look like Ukrainians didn't want to ally with west and that was ONLY because US manipulated them. I'm a Pole. I know EXACTLY why Ukrainians wanted to escape Russia's side. US wanted that too, so they made steps to make Ukrainian wishes true.

How to spot Russian propaganda: They treat Ukrainians as Russians that didn't want to go to big bad west, but USA meddled and made them stray from one true Russian way, Ukrainians were only a tool with no agency whatsoever used against Russian peaceful ways.

I'm presenting the quotes exactly as they are in the leaked call and reported and commented by the BBC article. The US did scheme behind the curtains to get their favourites elected. This is meddling. It also suggests that meddling was indeed necessary, or at least helpful, to get what the US wanted- i.e. it's not simply "what the people wanted".

The article even suggests that the EU simply doesn't have enough cash at hand to attract the Ukrainians, and would rather play it more on the long term- but that the US was too impatient for that. Yet more evidence of active meddling of US in Ukraine' political choices, with the purpose of attracting a country in their sphere of influence, surely not motivated by the will of the people.

Now, this is not to say that in abstract Ukrainians wouldn't have preferred the West to Russia. But they have been at least in part the victim of a power play between the USA and Russia.

Russian trolls have blown that single call out of proportion. We, too, can have a phone call and discuss who we'd prefer the next Chinese leader to be; it doesn't mean we actually have much influence over that. We can even discuss right here on HN who we'd like to see as the next American president, and it would not be factually wrong to characterize the discussion as "people on the most popular Silicon Valley forum frequented by tech billionaires picking the next president." But it wouldn't be entirely truthful either, would it?

That’s not true. Russia was perfectly fine with a sovereign Ukraine, as long as it respected their own constitution and terms of separations from USSR: to be a military non aligned country.

It’s not so hard to notice, that all the problems started when the other side of Budapest memorandum decided to not respect it anymore. Since 2004 Ukraine became less and less sovereign, resulting in a puppet government installed in 2014 and starting the hot phase. It’s also not hard to notice, that at every step Ukraine could chose negotiations, but was pushed towards more confrontation by Western bakers.

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