Ukraine has effectively outlawed all leftists

If you are a leftist then the current Ukrainian government is your enemy. That's Ukraine's decision. They don't like you, and they want you silenced.
It started in May of 2015, when they passed the decommunization laws. They banned all communist parties and all communist symbols. The Communist Party of Ukraine got over 2.6 million votes and 32 seats in parliament as late as 2012. The leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine was physically attacked while addressing parliament by members of All-Ukrainian Union "Svoboda", the neo-Nazi party, in 2014. A few months later this same right-wing mob tried to violently overrun parliament.
In 2019, one of the oldest newspapers in Ukraine was banned.

On November 27, the Sixth Appeal Administrative Court in Ukraine upheld the August 19 ruling of the Kyiv District Court, banning the pro-communist newspaper Rabochaya Gazeta (Worker’s Newspaper). The judgement legitimizes the state-led purge of communists in the country.
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Founded in 1897, Rabochaya Gazeta was banned under Ukraine’s reactionary anti-communist laws after it published articles quoting Karl Marx and Lenin, along with a commentary praising the achievements of Ukraine during the Soviet period.

If you are a good liberal this won't bother you because it's just communists, right? But if you know anything about history then you would know that the right-wing never stops with just communists.

Ukraine’s Western-backed government has used Russia’s February 24 invasion to drastically escalate its repression of the left, banning Ukrainian socialist parties and imprisoning left-wing activists.

There are widespread reports of Ukrainian state security services arresting and torturing leftists. Neo-Nazis and far-right extremists have systematically infiltrated Kiev’s police, military, and intelligence agencies since a US-sponsored 2014 coup installed a compliant pro-Western government.

In an early morning speech on March 20, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council was banning 11 opposition political parties, half of which are left-wing.

Some of the parties that were criminalized include the Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, and Party of Socialists.

One of the parties that were banned was Opposition Platform – For Life, which had 43 members currently serving in parliament, and was the 3rd largest political party in Ukraine.
The leader of this recently banned party was then thrown into jail when he tried to flee the country.

A court in Kyiv has banned the pro-Russian Opposition Platform -- For Life (OPZZh) political party led by jailed Kremlin-friendly politician Viktor Medvedchuk.

The Justice Ministry issued a statement after the Administrative Court of Appeals No. 8 handed down the decision on June 20, saying that the party's property and assets will be confiscated by the State Treasury.

Nashi, a center-left party had 6 seats, before it was banned and all of its property was seized.

Around the same time that Ukrainian President Zelenskiy was effectively banning all left-wing opposition parties, he was also cracking down on any leftist media outlets.

(Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has signed a decree that combines all national TV channels into one platform, citing the importance of a "unified information policy" under martial law, his office said in a statement on Sunday.

You might read that and rationalize some scenario is which that isn't tyrannical, but this should make it more obvious.

Three pro-Russian TV channels have gone off the air in Kyiv after pro-Western President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed a Ukrainian security council decree imposing sanctions for five years on eight media and TV companies.

Their broadcasts were only available Tuesday night via the video hosting platform YouTube, reported the Russian news agency TASS.
It identified the channels' owner as Taras Kozak, a lawmaker and member of the pro-Russian Opposition Platform for Life party, quoting him as describing Zelenskiy's move as "an act of blatant censorship."

There are simply too many accounts of left-wing journalists and activists being arrested and tortured to simply ignore.
All through this the catch-all accusation is that they were "pro-Russia". This accusation doesn't have to be proven, and the definition of "pro-Russia" is vague and fluid.

the pro-Russian label became very inflated. It started to be used to describe anyone calling for Ukraine’s neutrality. It has also started to be employed to discredit and silence sovereigntist, state-developmentalist, anti-Western, illiberal, populist, left-wing, and many other discourses.

This wide variety of views and positions could be grouped together and condemned under one label primarily because they all criticised and raised questions about pro-Western, neoliberal, and nationalist discourses, which have dominated Ukraine’s political sphere since 2014, but do not really reflect the political diversity of Ukrainian society.

This sounds very familiar. It is as if the Cold War never stopped.

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Officially, Nazi's didn't figure in that one. Zelensky/Ukraine have dusted off the Nazi's playbook from the 1930s.

Have only had two in person and very brief conversations about the Russian SMO. Both people view themselves as liberal and lean anti-war. Loathed Trump but didn't seem to buy into Russiagate. Next time I'm going to say, "I didn't know that you're a Nazi."

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Cassiodorus's picture

She started her own party in Ukraine -- don't know if it's been banned or not. Her book on Ukraine's recent history takes a rather Gramscian perspective; she studied under Kees van der Pijl at the University of Sussex, a marxist of some note.

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"I'm starting to believe that they want Donald Trump to get elected." -- Compton Jay

@Cassiodorus @Cassiodorus
Not exactly surprising ...

Not much daylight between her views of Russia and that of the Nazi battalions. One sentence from her summarizes her position:

The situation is grim but more favourable than I would have imagined and I can even imagine a situation where Russia is forced out of Donbas.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@Marie They can't just be, y'know, wrong.

Thanks for the link.

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"I'm starting to believe that they want Donald Trump to get elected." -- Compton Jay

@Marie n/t

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981