Here are some of your mistakes (I'll give you a respectful benefit of the doubt that these truly are mistakes and not conscious manipulations), which make @UkraineSol's reaction absolutely correct and justified. And when you're reading my reply, keep in mind that Iʼm Ukrainian and the leader of the only antineoliberal, pro wealth tax party in Ukraine. 1. You talk about the collapse of the USSR causing the invasion that killed hundreds of thousands, yet you don't mention the intentional starving of Ukrainians caused by the Soviet regime, as well as other repressions that together killed MILLIONS and are actually some of the main reasons why the majority of Ukrainians wanted to leave the USSR. 2. You explicitly single out ONLY the Baltic states from your "new USSR". Why don't you give Ukraine, or Uzbekistan for that matter, the same privilege in your hypothetical? 3. What "democratic basis" are you talking about, if Ukrainians overwhelmingly voted to leave the USSR? And, no, that was not because of the coup attempt in Moscow. The coup forced the Ukrainian communist party elites to finally make the decision and hold the referendum, but where the referendum to be held before the coup, the result would've been very similar, because most of the reasons for leaving were primarily tied to no longer having an appetite for being dictated to by Moscow as to how we should live. REGARDLESS of the type of regime that would sit in the Kremlin. 4. No, there was no "overwhelming vote to keep the Union together", as the ballot paper intentionally did NOT have an independence option and the vote was essentially a typical Soviet propaganda exercise, which, unfortunately you are repeating in your post. Furthermore, the whole premise of your post is factually incorrect. For some reason you equate "keeping the USSR but making it democratic" with an absence of criminal neoliberal "shock therapy". This is simply absurd. All of the newly independent republics that were democratic in the early 90-s (including the largest ones - Ukraine and Russia) went through various level of neoliberal "shock therapy". So if the parts of the whole did this, why would the whole, were it to survive, behave any differently? Obviously it wouldn't, and to suggest otherwise is simply a groundless fantasy. Thus, to sum up: you have indeed unfortunately repeated many of the Russian imperialist lies/manipulations that have plagued our people for years, while your main "mitigating statement" is patently false.
