January 27, 2025: Like World War II, Ukraine is a war between a dictatorship and a democracy. Russian leader Vladimir Putin does not consider the struggle with Ukraine a war, but rather an uprising in the separatist Ukrainian region of Russia. This makes 13 other new nations nervous. Like Ukraine, these countries used to be part of the Soviet Union. Putin has openly said he intends to put the Soviet Union back together.

This empire restoration by forcing independent nations to rejoin the empire is illegal according to international law. Russia, or at last Putin, ignores international law. For example, he was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for atrocities committed in Ukraine. Putin has to be careful where he travels outside of Russia because many countries will act on an ICC arrest warrant. About a dozen men indicted by the ICC have served time in jail or are currently being sought because of ICC convictions.

While Russia has few allies, like North Korea, and Iran supporting the Russian war effort, Ukraine has dozens of nations supporting the struggle against Russia. Vladimir Zelensky has visited 42 foreign countries since he became president of Ukraine in 2019. This includes eight visits to the United States, the major supplier of military and economic aid to Ukraine. Zelensky does all this travelling to maintain support of the Ukrainian war effort.

The Russian situation is different. Vladimir Putin sees himself as a successor to the Russian Czars. To do that Putin would effectively end the brief period of presidential elections that occurred from 1991 to the present. The elections still take place, but the current president can manipulate the voting to ensure he remains in power as long as he wants.

When the Soviet Union existed from 2022 to 1991, the elections were fake. The dictatorial Communist Party alone decided who could run and voting was mandatory. Since there was only one candidate, the communist candidate was sure to win. That changed, for a while after 1991. The first elected president was Boris Yeltsin, who won in 1991 and 1996. There was a two term limit, so Yeltsin could not run again after that. Beginning in the 2000 election, Vladimir Putin won every time since then, save for brief period when a crony was allowed to be President. From the beginning Putin used his time in power to change the election laws to enable him to remain president for as long as he wanted.

There are still elections and Putin has won them all so far. But if he loses one he has the option to manipulate the vote and turn that loss into a victory. In 1991, for the first time in Russian history, attempts were made to elect leaders rather than wait for some to fight, bribe, or intimidate their way to the top. Some Russians now call Putin Czar Vladimir the Third. Putin is flattered by that because he certainly operates like a Czar. Unlike most other monarchies in the past two centuries, the Russian Czars had absolute power and Putin intends to continue that trend.

Ukraine has a functioning democracy. The current president, Vladimir Zelensky, was present when the Russians invaded in 2022 and would like to hold scheduled presidential elections again. Ukrainian laws prohibit this while Ukraine is at war. Ukraine has had seven presidential elections since 1991 and four different men have been elected president. That last was Zelensky, who is stuck in the job until the war ends or he dies. The Russians have made several attempts to assassinate him.

While Ukraine fights to maintain its independence and democracy, Russia fights to rebuild an empire few people consider worth reviving. The Soviet Union was inefficient and eventually fell apart because it was bankrupt financially and morally.