Quote (thesnipa @ Jul 11 2023 12:44pm)

I dont disagree at all. the west has been trying to pull in Ukraine for a long time, as is evident by the rise of western friendly and anti-russian candidates for as long as Ukraine has had a president. we sent a lot of thoughts and prayers and the angry mob marched down the president building by building taking sniper fire until he said no mas.

Quote (thesnipa @ Jul 11 2023 05:44pm)

I dont disagree at all. the west has been trying to pull in Ukraine for a long time, as is evident by the rise of western friendly and anti-russian candidates for as long as Ukraine has had a president. we sent a lot of thoughts and prayers and the angry mob marched down the president building by building taking sniper fire until he said no mas.

Quote (Djunior @ Jul 11 2023 10:53am)

I'm not shifting the goalposts (you know there's an extra open line in my post that I used to separate the second part of my post)

They clearly accepted the risks in 2014, McCain was there, Verhofstadt was there, EU - Ukraine Association Agreement was on the table, NATO membership set in motion in 2008...

You don't believe your own "Thoughts and prayers" argument, no way lol

Quote (DizzyBusiness @ Jul 11 2023 10:56am)

Sending weapons would have been counter productive, it would have given government forces the excuse to crack down brutally.

You sent lots and lots of money, to one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe, why are you downplaying that by calling it "thoughts and prayers"?

And oh yeah the snipers, quite the tactical decision by the Ukrainian government to have their snipers pop random protestors eh? Wonder what the thought process was there

Quote (thesnipa @ Jul 11 2023 11:37am)

dont shift the goalposts. the statement at issue is "the west sent support for the euromaiden coup". i'm not even saying it's outright false, just that the coup wasn't carried out with american ar15s, it was carried out by people mostly without guns and homemade body armor. we have sent FAR too much to ukraine for the war, but to my knowledge we didnt sent them anything but thoughts and prayers for the coup which ousted Russia's puppet.

Quote (ofthevoid @ Jul 11 2023 11:11am)

That's not how coups work nowadays. Our support of the coup was through NGO's sponsored by the CIA and state department, as well as other venues that shifted the balance of power behind the scenes from the pro-Russians to the pro-US. Generals, police chiefs, judges & various internal power brokers don't magically switch allegiances over night just as a result of protests.

By your narrow definition like 3/4 of the coups we did during the cold war would be thoughts and prayers.

Quote

On 21 February, President Yanukovych signed a compromise deal with opposition leaders. It promised constitutional changes to restore certain powers to parliament and called for early elections to be held by December.

Despite the agreement, thousands continued to protest in central Kyiv, and the demonstrators took full control of the city's government district: the parliament building, the president's administration quarters, the cabinet, and the Interior Ministry.[68][69] On 21 February, a bill to remove Yanukovych was introduced in parliament.[70] On the same day, Yanukovych left for Kharkiv.[71]

On 22 February, the protesters were reported to be in control of Kyiv.[72][73] The parliament voted 328–0 in favour of removing Yanukovych from office and scheduled new presidential elections for 25 May.[74]

Parliament named its chairman, Oleksandr Turchynov, as interim president on 23 February.[75] A warrant for the arrest of Yanukovych was issued by the new government on 24 February.[76] Over the next few days, Russian nationalist politicians and activists organised rallies in Crimea and urged the Russian government to help defend the region from advancing "fascists" from the rest of Ukraine.[77]

Quote (thesnipa @ Jul 11 2023 12:25pm)

im sure espionage was used to sway many people, including a lot of parliment, but shifting power dynamics in the country were undeniable. and once the president was removed from and relinquished power and fled there's not much many of the small/medium level officials could logically do.

protesters took Kyiv building by building, parliment voted out Yanukovych and Yanukovych fled, which was widely reported. what is a general doing to do? order snipers to continue to kill protesters? for what? the president was already gone. those diehard loyal to the cause fled with him to Crimea. and shortly after Crimea was annexed.

those loyal fought until it was a losing battle, then gave up because the new interim govt was internationally recognized as legitimate by basically every country but Russia. what's a judge going to do? strike down the parliamentary procedures as illegitimate? unseat the interim president? to what end?

Quote (babun1024 @ Jul 11 2023 12:26pm)

Stoltenberg, Nato membership only if Ukraine wins :lol:

Quote (ofthevoid @ Jul 11 2023 11:32am)

He fled because the balance of power underneath him shifted, not in a slow burn organic way you could justify as being legitimate. If this shift wasn't evident he would of never fled and would of let the protests fizzle out like they do in many countries across the globe. He was literally elected by ~50% and you're pretending that support and that even split wasn't there and vast majority of the country was against him and all of these internal powerbrokers just democratically followed the will of the majority seemingly overnight. That's not reality lol.

Quote (thesnipa @ Jul 11 2023 01:10pm)

we dangled a carrot of NATO membership 100%, knowing full well it would take decades to actually go through even if Russia didn't invade entirely. that was never the end goal of the american military industrial complex, they'd rather sell weapons to non-NATO members.



if you have links to exactly what you mean by sent lots and lots of money i'd happily read them. ive been trying to nail down our role in the coup precisely for a long time.

to reiterate, im not saying we didnt play a role, my contention that im happy to get rid of is that w/o US involvement the coup still happens and likely still leads us to this war. because NATO/EU membership was a desire of the protesters before the protest even happened, and the US did not provide to my eyes instrumental support that made the coup successful. leaving us with the only possibility being that protests would not have led to a coup if the US didnt get "involved", possible but i disagree. the protest then coup happened because EU trade talks were abruptly cancelled, and a pro-russian trade agreement replaced it.