Debunking the narrative: "NATO instigated a 'coup'/regime change in Ukraine in 2014"
Claim:
"The USA/NATO instigated a 'coup' in Ukraine in 2014, or 'astroturfed' a 'colour revolution' in order to install a western puppet"
Reality:
The 2014 Ukrainian revolution, also known as 'Euromaiden', was a popular revolt against president Viktor Yanukovych, widely seen by the public as corrupt, as well as a movement against the influence and pressure exerted by Russia on Ukrainian society and governance.
Euromaiden, a home grown and spontaneous mass public revolt
Far from being a small conspiracy of officials to overthrow the president, the revolution was in fact a mass movement of the public, with direct participants alone estimated to be a substantial 20% of the Ukrainian population.1
Amidst huge crowds of the Ukrainians gathering in city centres and in some instances escalating to violence and disorder, the president Yanukovych decided to flee the country for Russia. In his absence, the democratically elected parliament of Ukraine voted to formally remove him by a vote of 328 - 0. Even if you include deputies that were absent at the time, the vote still amounted to fully 73% of the parliament - meaning an overwhelming majority of Ukraine's democratically elected politicians voted to remove Yanukovych, directly contradicting the narrative that it was a coup orchestrated by a small cabal.6
FFA : Frequently False Assertions
Vitoria Nuland: cookies and a phone call
One of the most popular false narratives about Euromaiden concerns a leaked phone call from Victoria Nuland, then U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, to Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. This call allegedly exposed her as 'hand-picking' officials for the post revolt government, therefore demonstrating that the whole affair was a regime change orchestrated by the US government. Other supporting evidence includes the claims that she and Pyatt were seen handing out cookies to anti-government protestors.
This narrative is misleading for several reasons:
-
The call was not about attempting to oust the then still president Yanukovych, but rather her voicing complaints about how EU representatives were handling the negotiations between Yanukovych and the opposition in forming a new cabinet. The context here is that both the US and the EU were trying to diplomatically resolve an already existing crisis in Ukraine by brokering a deal between the president and the opposition. It had nothing to do with trying to instigate any crisis in the first place.3,2
-
According to diplomat Christopher Smith's account, the phone call took place on the night of February 4 2014, over two months after protests had begun. By that time the Euromaiden revolt was alread will in progress, including occupations of government buildings by activists, riots with police shooting protestors in the capital, rioters surrounding army barracks, multiple incidents of arson and streets being blocked of traffic. Suffice to say, in terms of the timeline, one couldn't possibly link this call to any meaningful orchestration of events.4
-
Regarding the 'cookies incident', this is trivial to debunk. The claim concerns her visit to Maidan (Independence Square) in Kyiv on December 13. Crucially, this visit was the day after a night of violence and clashes with riot police, so it's obviously false that even her mere symbolic gesture of providing bread and cookies to protesters could have possibly caused any of the violence that occurred the night before. Further still, Smith's account states that bread was in fact handed out to both protesters and police in an effort to indicate the US were not taking sides.2
Claims that the killing of 48 protestors, known as the 'Maidan Massacre', was a false flag by pro-Western forces
Another popular narrative used to undermine the Euromaiden revolt is the accusation that a notable tragic incident in which multiple protesters were shot dead by Berkut riot police was actually a 'false flag', and that the real shooters were far right pro-Western militants.
In reality several officers have already been charged and convicted for the murder of protesters on February 20, 2014. The Sviatoshyn District Court has been able to link 40 of the 48 dead protestors to Berkut riot police, with the remaining 8 deaths having insufficient evidence to determine the precise perpetrator.5
