Much less. Texas had somewhat over 500 executions 1976-2014. Then again, Russia had no capital punishment since a serial killer has been executed in 1996.

Shot? In the 1980-ies USSR? Not bloody likely. Especially not when Gorbachev came to power. Worst case would be the psych ward, but the most probable outcome would be 6 months or so of prison. Death penalty was mostly reserved for murder, rape, organised crime and similar felonies, although also bribery and grand larceny.

You can actually see that while in the 1960ies there were over 2000 executions every year, in the 1980ies there were usually less than 500 a year.

It does very well, in fact.
You see, the reason why Ukrainian army is so weak is that while they have inherited a shitload of Soviet weapons (Ukraine was the second largest weapon site of the USSR), they have sold almost everything to unscrupulous buyers. Who knows where their nukes would be now.

Yeah, right. Never heard that one before.

Prison labour, unfortunately, is still commonplace in the world. As are crimes against humanity. In fact, just last week Poland was condemned by the European rights court for hosting a CIA black site where several human rights were violated.

Fact is, for many people USSR was indeed a decent place to live, not necessarily a real life approximation of Mordor.

Which is not located in Siberia.

There is a million of people living in Krasnoyarsk. I used to have a coworker from there, he told me that it was a nice place to live. And this is not even the largest city in Siberia.

Heh, I hear ya.
I see it here quite often here on Slashdot: "if not this or that you would speak either German or Russian now". I actually speak both.

Again, if you fight for an enemy nation in a war expect people are going to be angry at you.

There was no fight for an enemy nation in Odessa. There were anti-Maidan protesters.

Yanokovych employed snipers against massive peaceful protests, they occupied buildings but they also had hundreds of thousands of people. The pro-Russians have never had a tenth as many.

Except that it was not even proven that it was Yanukovich who used the snipers. And he wasn't indiscriminately shelling civilians in western Ukraine either. I have a coworker from Ukraine, his extended family in Donetsk (a young woman with two children) was killed by Ukrainian artillery.

Like I said, Yanukovich was a bloody crook, a common criminal who came to power, but compared to the current Ukrainian government he was almost a saint.

And you can't compare Yanoyovych's actions to a defence from an actual invasion.

What invasion are you talking about? There is a civil war going on. Irregulars on one side, quickly legalized former irregulars on the other side. Ukraine would never stand a chance against an actual invasion from Russia. Compare that to the utterly professional and practically bloodless annexion of Crimea. And this is why Ukrainian army doesn't even try to do anything about that, they know they don't stand a chance. Shelling cities, on the other hand, is easy. Especially these in Eastern Ukraine - Galicians don't consider Eastern Ukrainians to be real Ukrainians, even though they themselves were ousted from Poland when ethnic Poles were thrown out of Western Ukraine after WW2. They don't even speak the same language - a mix of Ukrainian and Polish by the Galicians, Surzhik by Eastern Ukrainian.

There's nothing criminal or fascist about the current rulers.

Svoboda was recognized as a neo-nazi party by basically every European country. And even though this party was in minority in the last elections, they suddenly have received a lot of interesting positions after Maidan because their armed thugs helped the coup. And what followed were banning oppositional parties, censorship of media and other nice things that typically follow after a fascist coup.

Tell me what they should have done in response to an invasion that you wouldn't consider "criminal" or "fascist".

An invasion has to happen first. Then one regular army can fight another regular army.

a) No one knows how the fire started, both sides were throwing molotov cocktails, and the majority of the crowd attempted to help evacuate the building.

You can see in numerous youtube videos that while some of the crowd helped the people out, others happily continued to throw incendiaries into the windows. Majority my arse.

b) Ally yourself with an enemy nation who has just invaded and annexed part of the country, take over buildings by force, then kill some peaceful protesters. You really expect to get a kind response?

Imagine that Yanukovich had done the same to the maidan thugs, what the current national guard does to civilists in Donetsk. For all his faults he was a saint in comparison.

They simply hand over half the country to actual murderous criminals and fascists?

Actual murderous criminals and fascists already own the majority of the country. What difference would it make?

The communist party of Ukraine. 13% of voters have voted for them in the last parliament election - the fourth largest party back then. Banning oppositional parties is something that even that crook Yanukovich did not dare.

Sure about Space X being the cheapest? If I remember correctly, Zenit is yet cheaper.

I do believe you, but Czech republic seems to be different so it was very helpful to learn a bit Czech - especially the part that differes with Russian. That really helps to transform a Russian sentence into a sort of broken Czech that was, in my experience, better understandable for them, than English.

Romanians often speak decent English, and, obviously, French (that is one language I, for one, struggle with). Poles are also fine with English.

And what's your explanation for why the Ukrainians would want to inflict civilian casualties?

Sheer primitive tribalism. The guys who have burned people alive in Odessa had a lot of fun doing it. And they were cheered at by several local politicians.

There was nothing murderous or repressive about the government

Well, shelling civilians and arming neo-faschist thugs surely counts for murderous. And as for repressive, they banned an oppositional party few days ago.

That is what I did. I was actually surprised that many people in their twenties don't speak English, or, if they do, then just barely. But some of them speak Russian - with a funny accent, but pretty well.