The reason for Euromaidan is simple. Ukraine is poor and EU represents the road to prosperity. In 1991, after collapse of Soviet Union, Polish and Ukrainian economies were exactly the same size. The same GDP. Poland made very quick pivot to the west. We decided to join NATO in 1999 and EU in 2004. Last year Polish economy was 3 times bigger than Ukrainian.
Nothing good ever comes from the east.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
https://blazetrends.com/victoria-nuland-a-shadowy-character-...
https://www.salon.com/2021/01/19/who-is-victoria-nuland-a-re...
Nuland served as the deputy national advisor to to Vice President Dick Cheney, serving as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser and exercising an influential role during the Iraq War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland
Her husband - Robert Kagan is the leading advocate of " "liberal interventionism" and was one of the early and strong advocates of military action in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan as well as to "remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan
I would strongly suggest a reading of history with a deeply skeptical view of US state department. The saddest thing for me was comforting Libyan friends who were in shock after their nation dissolved to ashes - a nation which had universal health care.
I agree that discussing who should and should not be in the government of an independent state is wrong.
But there was no coup and Yanukovych himself signed an agreement whose first point stipulated government change, Yanukovych decided to flee on his own and Yanukovych was impeached by democratically elected parliament.
USA did not start the protests. The protests started because people, especially around Kyiv, wanted and still want more than ever across the whole Ukraine to join EU. Yanukovych was elected with the promise of joining EU as a strategic goal.
At the same time, on 27 February 2014, masked Russian troops without insignia took over the Supreme Council (parliament) of Crimea and captured strategic sites across Crimea. Crimea was annexed on 18 March 2014 by Russia.
What on earth does that even mean?
If you watch the videos the entire city was on fire and the "peaceful protestors" were firing rocket propelled grenades at the police force. And the Democratically elected leader, Yanukovych, had to flee the country and give control over to the insurrectionists or he would have been murdered.
I guess you can say "That wasn't a coup" if you like, but we would really just arguing about semantics here.
Towards the end it was certainly not a peaceful ordeal. It was more of a small uprising.
I recall snipers shooting to protestors.
But I don't recall RPGs being used by either side when I was following it. I could not find any mention of it right now. Any sources of that claim?
But on Feb 22nd, the protesters refuse that deal and seize Yanukovich's palace, stripping him of power immediately. After which he flees.
It's that seizing of the palace and rejecting the EU-brokered deal is what is usually called "the coup".
1. Within 48 hours after the signing of this agreement will be adopted, signed and promulgated a special law that will restore the action of the Constitution of 2004, as amended by this time. The signatories declare their intention to create a coalition and form a national unity government within 10 days thereafter.
On February 22, 2014 as allowed by Article 111 of the Ukrainian Constitution, Verkhovna Rada decided to impeach Yanukovich with 328 votes for, 0 against and 122 not present or abstaining.
Of that three — that all had to happen — exactly zero happened. Instead, the Verkhovna Rada declared that Yanukovych "withdrew from his duties in an unconstitutional manner" and cited "circumstances of extreme urgency" as the reason for early elections.
This can be taken to a direction of "democratic transfer of power under extraordinary circumstances". This also can be taken to a direction of "unconstitutional coup d'etat". The direction depends on the goals one's trying to achieve.
The evidence that it was a US-backed coup is quite weak; from Nuland's leaked call, to Nuland handing out sandwiches to protesters, to the speculative opinions of Estonia's FM, to the few billions of investments the US has made into civic institutions since 1991 -- it's a little bit of smoke if you squint really hard and apply a good dose of confirmation bias, while simultaneously sweeping under the rug Russia's more aggressive colonial meddling in Ukraine (such as Yushchenko's poisoning).
Maybe better evidence will emerge later about 2014 as records are declassified (such as it did with Diem's overthrow), it's possible and wouldn't be surprising, but barring better evidence, it needs to be labelled the 2014 Maidan Revolution, or something similar.
A lot of people seem to think that Poland or Baltic states were somehow forced into NATO. Certainly narrative that China is trying to sell right now.
We knew very well that aligning ourselves with Russia is just straight road to disaster. And we needed to get as far as possible as soon as possible from Russian imperialism when we had a small window of opportunity.
Ukraine was split on it and it did result in disaster.
This is not an either-or proposition: the truth could well be that there were (lots of) people who wanted a regime change AND the US State Department intervened.
USA talked, while Russia started a war. Both can be understood as interventions, but they are not equivalent.
And both are wrong.
> but they are not equivalent
And still, both are wrong.
> I agree that discussing who should and should not be in the government of an independent state is wrong.
But annexing a piece of land is just on a completely different level.
There is no equivalency and you should not be trying to create it.
There's also no equivalency between a serial killer who killed 10 people and a serial killer who killed 100 people.
> and you should not be trying to create it
I'm not trying to create any equivalency. But if these two serial killers are fighting each other to death, may I please be excused from rooting for one of them?
What do you suggest we label a situation where the US government officials get in touch with people opposing the regime in a foreign country, in protests (that turned violent) and talk to their leaders, designating one of them to lead the future government and vetoing some of them from joining that future government?
(Note that the leaked Pyatt-Nuland call is from before Feb 5th. They apparently talked to Yatsenyuk to lead the future gov't, and they are discussing that Klitchko and Tyahnibok stay out while supporting it. On Feb 27th the new gov't is sworn in, lead by Yatsenyuk, with Klitchko and Tyahnibok on the outside.)
On similar note, what would you call a situation where Russian gov't would get in touch with people opposing the ruling US order and organize a regime change in US? "Popular Revolution" or "Russia-instilled coup"?
That's why we shouldn't label it a US-backed coup. That label connotes a large degree of involvement and influence over the causal factors underlying the revolution which can't be supported.
If the US followed Russia's tactics and poisoned pro-Russian Ukrainian leaders, or sowed disinformation in their media ecosystem, then sure, the label of a US-backed coup would be more than appropriate.
[1] Actually, this is me being overly generous. While that is one possible interpretation, another is that they simply recognized that Yatsenyuk will take power due to his overwhelming popularity among Ukrainian people, and are simply trying to preempt and manage the inevitable factional politics that could arise post-revolution.
The US went ballistic over the idea that Russians interfered in their elections by publishing emails. The direct contacts would turn them super-ballistic.
If Russia played no role in instigating the conditions of the revolt, and if Russia was a close US ally, then I would not call that a Russia-backed coup attempt.
The analogy doesn't fit, though, because Russia wasn't an ally, it was an adversary with its heart set on undermining US democracy. And Russia did play a role in the events that caused the revolt, with the purported stealing and releasing of the DNC's and Podesta's private e-mails, strategically leaked immediately after the Access Hollywood tape. One could make a case that these leaks got Trump elected due to the thin margins that he carried he election by, and that the leaks created an atmosphere of deep-state conspiracy thinking in the US public that made people more pliable to Trump's stolen election lies.
If you think that involvement was limited purely to "discussion" I have a nice bridge for sale.
The specific details are usually hazy and rarely clear-cut, but there is well documented history of the US involving themselves in all sorts of "coups" and "revolutions". And that involvement doesn't imply that these actions aren't supported in one way or another by segments of the population in the country where they are performed. If there are benefits to the US, they're in there contributing.
And despite all the effort to engineer pro Russia sentiment in Ukraine, it never worked, because it is not actually that easy to create large scale support for anything from outside.
But in accordance with what quite a lot of other Ukranians wanted, voted for and worked for for a long time.
Ukraine is a badly-divided country that has been long in a business of imposing the will of some of their people on all of their people. What will of some was imposed on all changed with time; the fact did not.
In similar situation, some of Swiss people wanted more association with Germany while some wanted more association with France or Italy; they wisely decided on neutrality and have been living with that peacefully for hundreds of years, staying out of many wars involving some or all of their neighbors.
Nope, the rejection of Eu did not had that much support. Trying to frame these two groups as equivalent in standing is a lie. And also, Americans did not made 10000 people to protest either.
> they wisely decided on neutrality and have been living with that peacefully for hundreds of years, staying out of many wars involving some or all of their neighbors.
This is nonsense. Neutrality means exactly what is happening now - large scale invasion from Russia. Anti-Ukrainien sentiment was there for being actively build up in Russia for years. Russia don't want to Ukrainien neutrality. They want to eliminate Ukraine all together. And there is no way you dont know it at this point.
And the debate here is about EU not even nato.
Also, real neutrality would required that there is no meddling from Russia either, that Russia wont try to impose own will on Ukraine. Wont try to put own puppets into government. Wont try to turn Ukraine into autocracy like Belarus. It would also required Russia to abandon imperialistic ideology, abandon the "we will suppress Ukrainian language and identity again" plans too.
This war is not about west. This war is about Russia.
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For that matter, Finland seems to be rethinking neutrality too now. Just one more data point about how "neutrality" is not looking "wise" now. It is either "naive", "attempt at dishonest framing" or "I want Russia to annex Ukraine, actually".
The subsequent rejection of Russian language got you without a country. I wonder if you are happy now, Kelvin.
Not so in the territories that are now included in Ukraine. The proportion of the nationalities and their relative wealth has been drastically altered during the last century by Stalin, who moved out many "inferior races", confiscating all their valuable belongings and sending them to much worse places (when not just murdering them), while bringing in Russians to replace them.
The Russians colonists have been privileged in comparison with the natives since the beginning, when many have been installed directly in the houses and on the lands from which the former inhabitants had been evicted.
Not enough time has passed since then, so there are still living people who remember how it was before any Russian was around.
This "badly-divided country" has been created by Stalin less than a century ago. The division is the same as in all the other former parts of the Soviet Union, between the earlier inhabitants of those countries and the Russian colonists who have lost their privileges after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Hopefully, after some more time, the people could become wiser and reach a model of cohabitation like the Swiss, but as long as not only the Russians have never apologized for their former acts, but they also continue with attempts of military invasions of their neighbors at any opportunity, like they have continuously done for many hundreds of years, the Swiss model remains an illusion for the former Soviet republics.
Stalin never bothered with races at all. Nazis did.
> This "badly-divided country" has been created by Stalin less than a century ago.
Now you're just repeating Putin's own words — "Ukraine was created by Soviet Russia".
> colonists have been privileged in comparison with the natives
The relations between Russians and Ukrainians are not of "colonists" and "natives" — it's fundamentally different from Brits/Hindus, or French/Algerians, or Italians/Ethiopians. They are two branches of the same group of people. The modern Russian state, and its church, both trace themselves to Kiev.
Your understanding of Ukraine's history is so factually incorrect, to the point that I don't see a reason to continue this conversation.
Just a couple of examples of the nationalities which were removed from the territories now in Ukraine, sent to remote areas, e.g. in Siberia or Uzbekistan, and replaced with Russians are the Tatars and the Romanians.
> Now you're just repeating Putin's own words — "Ukraine was created by Soviet Russia".
You have either misunderstood or you pretend to have misunderstood what I have said. You said that Ukraine is divided now, I said that this division mentioned by you was created by Stalin, not so long ago.
I have used the word "natives", because the natives are mostly Ukrainians but also many other minorities.
> They are two branches of the same group of people
The fact that one millennium ago their ancestors were a single people means nothing when today they do not treat each other as equals.
During the Soviet Union, those belonging to a minority, either Ukrainian or any other minority, could indeed have similar career advancement opportunities like the Russians, but only with the following conditions: master the official Russian language, never express any doubt about the bullshit history that was taught in the Soviet Union, according to which everything good in the world, in any art, science, technology and even sports, has been discovered or invented by some unknown great Russian, even if the Imperialists claim otherwise (at least this was the version of history that I have seen in the Russian manuals used prior to 1970, I do not know if the later manuals became less fantastic), never say anything that would show lack of agreement with the idea that even if the Soviet Union had a very large number of nationalities, all with equal rights, the Russians deserve to be much more equal and they must always be imitated in everything, as they know better, from political and economical organization to science and technology and even in minor aspects, e.g. the names of the soccer teams.
Basically, in the Soviet Union anyone belonging to a minority could indeed have the same success like a Russian, but by becoming a Russian.
Regarding my understanding of Ukraine's history I can assure you that I know much more correct facts than you presume, and not from secondary sources, but from direct sources, because my mother had many relatives who were deported to Siberia, robbed or murdered by Russians, in territories of the present Ukraine.
Also, I understand very well Russian so I form my opinion about the actions of Russia mainly by looking at what they themselves say, and not by what others say about Russia.
Isn't it the same in the modern USA? Implicit agreement with official narrative can get you anywhere, whereas explicit disagreement with it will get you cancelled.
In fact, both in the Soviet Union and the USA it would be easier to advance if you declare yourself a minority, even if the basis for such claim is weak.
This has been the Empire building-101 for ages: if you respect the state authority (emperor/czar/rule-of-law), state ideas (christianity/communism/democracy) and speak the state language, you can make it to the top — regardless of your ethnicity.
Even the Roman Empire had an Emperor who was Arab (historians agree he was really ethnic arab) and another one who was African (historians disagree just how black he was, but definitely agree he was unusually black). Salah-ad-Din (Saladin) was Kurdish. Russian Empire had tons of Germans/French/Swedes at their service. Of the famous Nazis, Otto Scorzeny was Polish (Skozheny would be a better rendition of his name) and Odilo Globochnik, Slovakian. Etc. etc. etc.
The idea that Ukrainians were somehow a "minority" in either Russian Empire or USSR is laughable to no end. Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians were a majority, and there would be no way to tell between them, unless you would study their personnel files. It's as laughable as suggesting that Austrian nazis were somehow treated badly by German nazis.
> Unlike Hitler, Stalin did not use the word "race", but he acted identically against various population groups distinguished by their nationality, which is why I have used the word "race", to emphasize their identical behavior.
I don't have particular bones to pick with your history, but you're misusing quotation marks.
You can listen to the "nobody" organizing the "not a coup" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6sxCs5k
Do you extend the same line of thinking to separatists in Crimea and Donbass?
So the difference is clear:
- in Kyiv, everything started with protests that the government tried to suppress for several months
- in Crimea everything started with Russian military taking control over the peninsula which is a foreign intervention, exactly the type that commenters above try to attribute to USA. But there were no USA soldiers on Maidan, and there were Russian soldiers in Crimea and Donbass.
The Guardian says otherwise: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/23/ukraine-crisis...
Second, the parent comments were explicitly referring to overthrow.
Please compare Ukraine’s or Belarus or Moldova’s situation (politic/democracy and economic) with any EU country bordering Russia.
People see the difference, and want better life for them selfs and their children.
Step one: install tough nationalist leader
Step two: sell the countries natural resources cheap to US/West
Step three: invest that money wisely to grow the nation.
Only joking, you don't need strongmen to sell natural resources cheaply to foreigners, you need them for the real step three when someone points out you're getting rich selling the country's resources and the average person gets nothing.
Real step 3: authoritarian crackdown financed with western cash inflows.
Step Four: slow, then quick, collapse of the above regime during which the big power play is to threaten to stop selling the resources cheaply and jailing, killing, torturing a bunch of actual patriots.
Step five: US/West to the rescue, saving you from those naughty strongmen who sold them the resources.
China got really lucky by not having many natural resources beside their people.
Russia, Iraq, Chile etc. got totally played.
What really is the difference between an authoritarian dictator controlling Iraq's oil (oh, and all the other bits of Iraq the west doesn't care about) and selling it to the west and getting support and funding from the West in return to build palaces full of gold. Versus Oligarchs, controlling even more strongly the bits of Russia the west cares about and allowing Russians to feel like they control the other bits. But only the oligarchs get the palaces full of gold, and probably in a proper country, in fact why not a superyacht, that's less obviously not in Russia, even though it's clearly not in Russia.
BP owns 20% of Rosneft (do you know how BP started? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bp-and-iran-the-forgotten-histo...)
But wait, this doesn't feel right, you have strong, patriotic leadership (like Iraq) and (like Iraq) your strong leader kills people that look and sound just like you to Americans. And Americans make a lot of noise about that while still buying your oil. Take that America. And (like Iraq) suddenly you're the bad guy when you thought you had a working relationship and power because you had the resources. And (like Iraq) USA is going to own you even more once you finish fucking yourself up.