Quote (Black XistenZ @ Sep 15 2022 07:57pm)
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:
https://i.imgur.com/26vYqFk.pngYanukovych 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).
And Ashlee Babbitt was an unarmed non-violent January 6th rioters who was shot and killed by DC police. And those rioters were more interested in taking selfies and lounging around than overthrowing a government.
There was an insurrection and coup going on in Ukraine, blaming the security forces for trying to quell it doesn't rationalize it whatsoever.
Again, this is quite simple: The pro-EU / pro-Russia demographics of the country were split geographically. Kiev is situated deep in the pro-EU areas. The people there overwhelming opposed the regime that was elected democratically by the will of the entire country. They rioted, they overthrew the government by force in a violent coup. The people who had elected Yanukovych lived largely in the east, where he was a former governor of the most populous oblast. The majority of Ukrainians were represented by him in a democracy, they were disenfranchised when the minority overthrew the democracy
You cannot rationalize this as some legislative gridlock or will of the overwhelming majority of the people. It was a textbook violent coup that overthrew a government, full stop.
Democracies, Ukrainian and American alike, have civil recourses and safety valves and separations of powers built into them. If you don't like the last guy who got elected, you can vote against him in the next election. That's how a democracy works.
Overthrowing a government you disagree with, by force, is a coup. And when the CIA gets involved and micromanages it, we can call it a CIA coup.
So here's my question for PARD: Why is getting people to acknowledge reality about Euromaidan so completely different in the public consciousness than every previous CIA coup? Nobody gets their knickers in a twist when we talk about Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua. Panama, etc etc. Why is Ukraine suddenly an exception? They didn't even take the cursory effort to obfuscate their presence and give plausible deniability, they put Hunter friggin Biden and Cofer Black on the Burisma board while Nuland and Pyatt appraised Ukrainian resumes on an unsecured phone line.