What I don't really understand is how some very smart and well read people who are aware of historical realities during the cold war find it so hard to believe that we had a hand in the coup. Like there's literally dozens of countries we did this post WW2. It's documented, it's proven, but no this time it's totally different. It was 100% a spontaneous and righteous display of democracy that oh by the way served our geopolitical goals totally by chance!

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Sep 15 2022 06:24pm

The mob turned violent after peaceful protests were met with violence by Yanukovych's special police.


As was Ukraine's parliament at the time, which wanted the association agreement with the EU...


Ukraine already was a split country in terms of political orientation and worldview long before the Euromaidan. The events of 2014 represent the moment when tensions which had been bubbling for a long time finally reached a boiling point.

Also, isn't it funny how you describe the appearance of unmarked Russian soldiers on Crimea and in the Donbass as "disenfranchised parts of Ukraine separating (subtext: of their own accord)" while you frame the protests of the pro-EU half of Ukraine as a "violent coup"?


There no longer existed a consensus on the way forward for the country, which is the reason why things fell apart in 2014 in the first place. Furthermore, the pro-EU side was not a minority trying to rule over the pro-Russian majority. Compare the map of the results of the 2010 presidential election with the way the current war has gone:

Yanukovych won regions like Kharkiv, Dnipro or Odessa. If support for him in the 2010 election was indicative of a pro-Russian stance, these places would have rolled over to Russia back in February, instead of passionately fighting back. Since his winning margin in 2010 was a slim 49/45, we can conclude that there is pro-EU majority in Ukraine today. (The entire Ukraine, including the regions currently controlled by Russia!)

Since it is completely illogical to assume that "a pro-EU minority imposing minority rule over a disenfranchised pro-Russian majority" would have flipped public opinion in the EU's favor between 2014 and today, we can also conclude that one of two statements must be true: either there already was a pro-EU majority back in 2014, or Russia's actions since 2014 did so much to alienate a significant chunk of its (former) Ukrainian supporters that this effect outweighed the effect of the "coup/minority rule" (which should have reinforced pro-Russian stances among already pro-Russia-leaning Ukrainians).

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 15 2022 07:13pm

it was still a coup sponsored by the west, the violence on the maidan was clearly manufactured with weirdly well equipped protesters, whoever fired on people on there is still unknown and lets not forget victoria nuland and her leaked call(s)

i agree with what you are saying, that does not mean however that there hasnt been a very aggressive push by the west to force ukraine into their camp

I, for my part, am not denying that the West had a hand in the Euromaidan, or in shaping the political landscape of Ukraine afterwards. Or that the West tried to capitalize on the chaos and power vacuum in Ukraine post-Maidan.
What I disagree with, however, are the following points:

- that it was a staged coup in which the West had not just "a hand", but was THE driving force
- that the protesters who forced Yanukovych out were the unequivocal bad guys and Yanukovych the unequivocal victim
- that the Euromaidan protests were astroturfed and contained no organic pro-EU sentiment among Ukrainians
- that Ukraine was majority pro-Russia in 2014, just because Yanukovych had won the 2010 presidential election (which he only won - and barely so - because of widespread disillusionment over the corruption and incompetence of the Tymoshenko government)
- that Ukraine's government had been "laying siege on the Russian parts of the country for 8 years", let alone "slaughtered" them

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 15 2022 07:12pm

Thing is, there really wasn't that much forcing needing to happen. Roughly half were pro-west anyways. It's enticing looking to Europe and seeing the standards of living and wanting to have the same visa rights other eastern europeans like in Poland or Romania has, access to investments, loans, jobs, etc. And that was the beauty of coup. It can pass off as a legitimate popular uprising given those realities on the ground and most wouldn't really question some of the abnormalities.



The coordination of the actual Maidan and the swiftness with which Ukraine turned westward isn't organic. Idk to what extent the meddling happened but a bunch of far-right groups wouldn't be flipping the military or somehow winning important parts of the government that easily without some outside professional coordination.

Think about it in US terms. What are the odds that the proud boys or whatever other 'patriot' group would be essentially flipping the military and large swaths of the govt to their camp organically seemingly overnight? This is banana republic-esque 1956 written all over it.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Sep 15 2022 07:31pm

The way I see it, there were very significant forces at work pushing for an orientation toward the West back in 2014. The democratically elected parliament (whose composition was probably more reflective of the true will of the people than the outcome of a heavily personalized, 1on1 presidential race!) wanted it, at the very least the 45% of Tymoshenko voters wanted it, probably more. Yanukovych was an ally of Putin and tried to keep the country aligned with Russia in spite of this pressure, but in his efforts, he eventually lost his grip and things spiraled out of control from the point of view of the Russian cause. To prevent an Ukraine under unified pro-Western control from formally joing the EU or NATO, Putin quickly sent special forces to Crimea and Donbass to secure the regions of Ukraine he cared about the most, and to create a frozen conflict which would prevent membership in the EU/NATO.

In hindsight, it seems like Putin always wanted to take Ukraine back eventually, but he needed time to reinforce his military, prepare the Western public with years of propaganda campaigns and so on. The collapsing oil and gas prices in 2014 (due to the fracking boom taking off) delayed things even further. Then, when covid abated and gas and oil prices soared and Biden signalled Western weakness on the world stage (by the botched and humiliating retreat from Kabul in 2021), he decided the time had come to strike. That's why Russia-owned natural gas storages in Western Europe were deliberately not refilled during the second half of 2021, that's why they worked so hard to get Nord Stream 2 online. During the summer of 2021, Russia had also successfully completed a test of its hypersonic missiles on intercontinental distances, which ensured that the West couldn't rely on potentially existing, top secret missile defense systems to intercept Russian nukes. Thus, nuclear deterrence was ensured for the time being, which would keep NATO from directly intervening in Ukraine with boots on the ground.


There has been a similarly aggressive push by Russia to keep Ukraine in its camp, so this particular argument is not really suitable to postulate some sort of "moral guilt" by the West.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 15 2022 07:44pm

Which far-right groups are you referring to that supposedly flipped the military? It's not like the Azov battalion suddenly took over the rest Ukraine's military leadership or anything like that....

The coordination and swiftness of Ukraine's westward turn after the Euromaidan isn't actually surprising or fishy if you ask me. Keep in mind that Ukraine's pro-EU forces were an organized political movement since at least the Orange Revolution in 2004!

I'm saying they didn't. The military standing down when the coup was happening implies some level of planning outside the scope that groups like Azov or Right Sector could accomplish. The military power brokers were already to some extent told to stand down and swayed to what's to come.

Ah, now I get what you meant. Gotta disagree with the implication though. Two coequal and democratically elected branches of government had gridlocked over a question which was existential for the future of the country. Both sides, the protesters and Yanokovych's special police, resorted to violence. Why should the military have intervened on Yanukovych's behalf in this situation?

Also, they were probably split on the EU vs Russia question as well. Could the generals have relied on all of their commanders and rank and file soldiers to side with Yanukovych once deployed, even the ones who were actually sympathizing with the Euromaidan protesters? The military getting involved in such a combustible situation would have carried a great risk of leading to a full-blown civil war.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 15 2022 08:02pm

Euromaidan is a textbook color revolution, whereby US NGOs as well as letter org enter the target country, shaping ops take place for years, then when a crisis happens they have the social/political terrain and 'troops' on hand to direct how things shake out with a high degree of success. In this case we literally have Nuland on record directing it with the US ambo and people are like "well, not really a coup!"


Ah yeah, the hindsight alternate reality in which the Steele Dossier was true and Putin didn't try to get Ukraine to implement Minsk 1 and 2 for almost a decade.

Like I said: the current era is even more delusional than that of yellow cake uranium and aluminum tubes in 2003.