Two of my former partners are Ukrainian, from Lviv and Kherson/Kyiv. I have many Ukrainian friends. One of them is a national reporter for Kyiv Independent. Ukrainian refugees lived at my house for months. Ukrainian refugees also lived at my friends’ houses and my extended family’s houses. I study Ukraine, Russia, and Eastern Europe at the MA level. I was born and raised in Slovakia. I lived in Warsaw during the initial stages of the war for three months, when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were refugees there. I flew all the way from Canada to volunteer at the border of Ukraine next to Uzhorod. My heart is with Ukraine. Was prior to the war and will be long after it.

Yanukovych and Yuschenko were not puppet regimes. They had their own volition and acted according to it. To say that corruption is not present in Ukraine after 2014 is to completely and unequivocally misunderstand Ukrainian politics.

I criticize Slovakian corruption as well as Canadian. That does not mean I hate the countries. I’ve devoted considerable energy and resources in support of Ukraine. And will continue to do so, despite needless negative feedback from people like you on people they know nothing about.