A once-thriving anti-war movement’s scattered remains left behind a vacuum now filled by wolves in sheep’s clothing. The bevy of falsehoods and misconceptions about the war in Ukraine needs to stop. A careful look at all of the available evidence shows very clearly that the CIA did not perform a coup in Ukraine.
The situation in Ukraine is very complicated and the rampant circulation of propaganda does not help. Comedian Jimmy Dore recently repeated this bizarre theory in a Tweet that was shared by the Libertarian Party’s Twitter account.
War Pig Rachel Maddow will never tell her audience the CIA instigated a Coup of Ukraine in 2014 & installed a puppet aligned with actual Nazis & then blew up the Nordstream Pipeline. Instead she lies about Peace activists so her audience stays Pro-War: pic.twitter.com/UxAeSNIdMs
— Jimmy Dore (@jimmy_dore) February 21, 2023
Rachel Maddow was unexpectedly accurate when she reported on the poorly attended Rage Against The War Machine rally in February. Even though she conspicuously failed to mention the Libertarian Party’s involvement—thank God—she nailed it with this report. She correctly called it a “pro-Russia” rally and rightly poked fun at an anti-war demonstration that favored the primary aggressor in the war. Oddly, many thought leaders in the LP and the Mises Caucus are not backing down from this pro-Russia narrative.
I was among the many big- and small-L libertarians planning to attend. It’s about damn time we resurrected the anti-war movement. As the rally approached, however, things didn’t seem right.
More and more pro-war speakers (including a convicted pedophile) joined the event, a Libertarian National Committee member resigned in protest of the rally (among other things), the Radical Caucus dropped its sponsorship, and so on. The rally was also a breaking point for former presidential candidate Vermin Supreme, whose public rebuke of the LP was featured in Newsweek.
All of this is par for the course with the new group running the LP, but I did not expect them to so boldly back the Kremlin and its messaging. This is leaving many Libertarians scratching their heads. Why would they do this? Why the insistence on defending Russia?
Libertarians are understandably skeptical of institutional intelligence originating from inside the US government. Unfortunately, this knee-jerk contrarianism has also led to the unquestioned consumption of actual Russian propaganda. Of course, correcting any propaganda is a daunting task, but the 2014-Ukraine-coup conspiracy theory underpins so many of the misrepresentations surrounding the Ukrainian War.
This conspiracy is now viral. Elon Musk even prominently repeated it.
That election was arguably dodgy, but no question that there was indeed a coup
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2023
This conspiracy theory has a lot of background, but here is a simple summary.
THE OFFICIAL THEORY
In 2010, Ukraine elected Victor Yanukovych to be its fourth president in an election that international observers declared fair and “truly competitive”. Yanukovych acted on behalf of Ukrainians who supported Russia, but meddling Western influences undermined this peaceful election.
When a referendum to get Ukraine to join the EU failed, US diplomats decided to influence public sentiment and orchestrate a coup. Evidence of this plot surfaced through a leaked phone call between EU Secretary of State Victoria Nulund and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The phone call was leaked to the media on February 14, 2014.
Additionally, as early as 2013, Western diplomats like the president of the National Endowment for Democracy made a case for supporting the independence of former Soviet states. NED poured millions into Western-backed projects in Ukraine and poisoned the well of Ukraine-Russia relations.
Finally, all of this politicking came to a head with the Maidan protests. Far-right groups, working in conjunction with Western interests, committed many acts of violence and held parliament at gunpoint. Yanukovych was forced to flee for his life so they could hold a rigged election the following May and install a Western puppet.
There are countless details to examine, but those are the highlights of this conspiracy theory. Most of it is false or misleading, though. More than anything, it is a lie of omission. This theory simply lacks context.
THE BETRAYAL OF YANUKOVYCH
The first piece of misinformation to untangle involves Yanukovych’s support for Russia. In 2010, he campaigned on a platform of a multivector foreign policy that dealt with both Russia and Europe.
A year into his term, he wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, making it clear that he had every intention of pursuing an alliance with the EU—something Ukrainians wanted. A 52% majority of Ukrainians wanted to make relations with Russia a top foreign policy priority, above relations with Europe. By 2012, that sentiment completely flipped.
Public sentiment about foreign policy priorities likely shifted because of rampant corruption, authoritarian policies, and a series of very bad deals for Ukrainians.
Yanukovych started his term by signing the controversial Kharkiv Pact. The new treaty would grant Russia a 25-year lease to use Sevastopol as a naval base in exchange for a 30% reduction in gas prices from Russian imports.
There were several problems with this treaty, though.
First, this pact is an extension of the Partition Treaty of 1997 and its follow-up, the Friendship Treaty. Boris Yeltsin signed both of these treaties three days apart. The Friendship Treaty is also known as the Big Treaty because it officially established borders and formally recognized Ukrainian sovereignty. Boris Yeltsin was far more friendly to the existence of an independent Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, does not even acknowledge the existence of an independent Ukraine. This sentiment poses an existential threat to Ukrainians, so a treaty granting an extension on this Russian military base in their own backyard was understandably alarming.
Second, the nature of this treaty’s ratification in the Ukrainian parliament is controversial. When they voted to ratify this treaty, the largest faction—the Party of Regions—blocked the podium and demanded an immediate vote. As a result, the treaty’s ratification was chaotic—fistfights, smoke bombs, and even egg-throwing. According to an analysis by Taras Kuzio, which examines the many problems with the 2010 agreement, the pact was also illegal for several reasons. In particular, the analysis says:
“The Stability and Reforms coalition that voted for the 2010 treaty is illegitimate because it rests on only 220 deputies from three factions, with the remaining twenty-five deputies having been blackmailed, bribed or coerced to defect from the opposition. The 2010 treaty was railroaded through parliament without parliamentary or public discussion and after ignoring votes against it in three important committees (two of which had negative majorities). The treaty also violates the constitution, which bans permanent military bases, and it was not discussed prior to a vote in the National Security and Defense Council as the constitution requires.”
Finally, the pact didn’t last because Russia reneged on the deal and raised Ukrainian gas prices anyway. The pact also forced together Ukrainian authorities and the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which had been experiencing escalating skirmishes just before Putin nullified the pact in 2014. Meanwhile, the Russians were already preparing an alternative naval base for when the 1997 Partition Treaty expired. As a result, this appeared to be complete acquiescence to the Kremlin.
Add to this the fact that Ukraine was already saddled with a bad 10-year deal, negotiated by Yanukovych’s predecessor, which made Ukraine more dependent on increasingly expensive Russian gas. Putin also manipulated negotiations by imposing sanctions on Ukrainians. At the same time, he offered them one poisoned solution after another.
One of those solutions would be an offer that Putin didn’t want Ukraine to refuse. It was an all-too-convenient new proposal to merge Ukraine’s largest national oil company, Naftogaz, with the Russian exporter Gazprom. This merger was an all-around bad deal for Ukraine. As analyst Volodymyr Olemchenko put it:
“The question is not really about the price of gas, but politics. Russia simply is using the gas contract to achieve its political ends—bring Ukraine into its zone of influence, drag us into the Customs Union.”
In each instance, Ukrainians felt increasingly played. All of this deal-making left Ukrainians anxious about their economic future. To make matters worse, Yanukovych’s authoritarian streak was starting to show. Ukrainians and outsiders alike saw him as a growing threat to press freedom that meted out “selective justice” on political rivals and responded to protests with laws designed to stamp out free speech. The coup theory also overlooks Yanukovych’s ties to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and many more well-documented displays of corruption.
When protestors hit the streets, they had a very clear picture of who Yanukovych really was. He was not the guy to usher in the ideals of freedom and democracy that the Ukrainians increasingly wanted. Instead, his goons carried out ruthless and bloody violence the night parliament rejected the EU deal. This violent show of force led to more than 100,000 people showing up the next day. The people were done with Yanukovych and his corruption.
THE MAIDAN PROTESTS AND THE “COUP”
The first Maidan protest was initially small in number but that changed when Yanukovych responded with excessive force.
The claim that Nazis and nationalists led the protests is mostly false—at least in the beginning. Though they did contribute to the violence, the far-right was not much of a major driver throughout the protests. Furthermore, claims that the government in Ukraine is a Nazi government are woefully inaccurate. The most successful far-right party, Svoboda (also known as the All-Ukraine Union), saw its greatest success before the 2014 revolution. Its support has since plummeted from 38 seats in the Rada in 2012 (out of 450) to only one today.
Yanukovych’s increasingly authoritarian policies inspired the protests. These policies included deploying snipers to take out protesters. The strangest thing about these snipers is the varying theories regarding who they are.
Some early reports suggested they may have been simply other protesters. However, one study, conducted a year later, came to a pretty wild conclusion. It claimed that the snipers were far-right extremists creating a false flag situation to gin up support for overthrowing the very government the protesters were already fighting. Many conspiracy theorists cite this study and act like it proves that the snipers were hired by opposition leaders.
However, this study was not peer-reviewed and has been largely debunked. It seems to have been politically motivated and lacks rigorous fact-finding altogether. At best, it leaves the topic of the snipers’ identities up for debate. Nevertheless, several public figures and institutions, including the Kremlin, have made a serious effort to pin this on the opposition—the question is why?
Consider that this theory became popular because of a leaked phone between two foreign diplomats. Predictably, the Kremlin-backed news network RT (formerly Russia Today) was the first to carry the leaked phone call. In fact, they did so a day after Putin first floated the idea that the snipers were provocateurs. Isn’t that interesting?
Several Ukrainian officials also said that Yanukovych himself ordered the killings. Given how much violence the police had already inflicted on citizens before the appearance of snipers, this seems much more likely.
The brutality of Yanukovych’s regime was so concerning that several human rights groups investigated the events surrounding the Maidan protests. These groups included the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which produced a pretty damning report, and the International Criminal Court.
After investigating the period leading up to and including the Maidan protests, the ICC concluded:
“…while the acts of violence allegedly committed by the Ukrainian authorities between 30 November 2013 and 20 February 2014 could constitute an “attack directed against a civilian population” under article 7(2)(a) of the Statute, the information available did not provide a reasonable basis to believe that the attack was systematic or widespread under the terms of article 7 of the Statute. The Office however noted that serious human rights abuses had occurred in the context of the Maidan events, and expressed its willingness to reassess its preliminary analysis in the light of any new information.”
While that preliminary report ended there, ICC opened an official investigation last year after 39 State Parties—ICC member nations—referred the situation in Ukraine to the ICC’s prosecutor. The investigation is ongoing and will revisit their preliminary findings to evaluate the causes of the protest. (As a side note, ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin last month for war crimes involving children.)
Yanukovych’s violent crackdown eventually led a Ukrainian court to convict him of treason. It’s simply absurd to conclude that the main driver of these protests was anything other than Yanukovych’s authoritarian actions.
Before the investigations and trial, Yanukovych and the opposition leaders had reached a deal, mediated by European diplomats, the day after the “Sniper Massacre”. The real fly in the ointment for the coup theory is that Western diplomats encouraged the protesters to take this deal.
If you go back and listen to that leaked phone call, Nuland and Pryatt seem to be pushing for this. They speak about “…some kind of outreach to Yanukovych,” suggesting that they wish to include him in negotiations. It would seem strange to talk about working with Yanukovych if the actual goal is to replace him. Why would they do this if they wanted to overthrow Yanukovych?
In reality, protesters wanted nothing less than Yanukovych’s resignation. While authorities carried out most of the the violence, some protesters responded in kind. One ultranationalist, known for political violence, urged supporters to storm the president’s residence if Yanukovych wasn’t gone by the next day. Many protesters cheered this. There was blood in the water, to be sure.
The protesters did storm the president’s residence and attacked some members of parliament. This happened despite members voting to remove Yanukovych, who fled the country shortly after that.
While all of this was going on, Russia illegally invaded and annexed Crimea. Putin declared ownership of Crimea through executive fiat in a referendum that the rest of the world considered invalid.
The United Nations overwhelmingly rejected Russia’s illegal annexation with a resolution that passed with a 100-to-11 vote. The Russian delegation argued that the annexation was the voluntary result of citizens wishing to reunite with Russia. The UN majority did not agree and regarded the annexation as an affront to the sovereignty of a nation. For better or worse, the European Union responded with increased sanctions on Russia.
In other words, ignore Yanukovych’s authoritarianism as well as Putin’s invasion of Crimea and focus, instead, on Western influencers. You simply must believe that protesters took to the streets because of Western meddling and not because of all of these other things going on around them. Even so, one question remains: Who are these puppet masters and how much influence did they exert on Ukrainian politics?
THOSE WESTERN INFLUENCERS
The list of organizations influencing Ukrainian politics could be the subject of its own article. This list includes the United States Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, and many others.
The Financial Times wrote about some funding from Ukraine’s own oligarchs. However, reporter Roman Olearchyk also wrote:
“…it becomes evident after spending just a few hours on Kyiv’s main square that they are not the core backbone of the movement.”
The Financial Times also mentions the instrumental role the Kyiv-based organization New Citizen played in starting the protests. New Citizen is led by Oleh Rybachuk, the former chief of staff for Victor Yushchenko—the darling of the Orange Revolution. Yushchenko initially lost to Yanukovych in the 2004 election, during which he survived an assassination attempt that left him disfigured. Ukrainians claimed there was election fraud and this led to the Orange Revolution. The Ukrainian Supreme Court ordered a second election at Yushchenko won.
Since then, Rybachuk has been involved in a number of Western-oriented NGOs in Ukraine. He is also a favorite of NED, the EU, and NATO. Yanukovych’s regime targeted one of Rybachuk’s NGOs, Center UA, with claims of money laundering. This claim was clearly a politically motivated attack on his associated group, Stop Censorship, which arose in response to Yanukovych’s assault on press freedom.
Rybachuk’s groups indeed received much of their funding from the West. For example, the Kyiv Post reported that of Center UA’s $500,000 in funding for 2012, 54% came from USAID and 36% from the Omidyar Network (a foundation owned by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar). NED provided some additional funding, too. The Omidyar Network also gave $335,000 to New Citizen in 2011, citing government transparency as the primary reason.
There’s that word again: transparency. It’s a word that pops up often when talking about NED and USAID, though not for the same reason critics think.
Even when reporting on where the money is going, organizations that openly spread conspiracy theories, like the Ron Paul Institute, appear to miss the point. RPI wrote:
“The State Department controls the prime funding sources for non-military intervention, including the controversial National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which Washington created to fund covert and clandestine action…“
RPI and other organizations talk about NED and USAID as if these purported “covert and clandestine” organizations don’t have annual reports, which anyone can easily read online. Conspiracy theorists are one Freedom of Information Act request away from revealing these “secrets” to the world.
The far-left Jacobin, which also considers the events of 2014 to be a coup, offered a much more measured description. Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic wrote that NED is “an instrument for overtly carrying out the kinds of influence operations the CIA used to carry out covertly.” This analysis is much more accurate, to be sure.
Nevertheless, sources like these seem to search far and wide to find a smoking gun, but the best they can come up with is “influence.” This does not bode well for any theory about a coup.
It is undeniable that Western influencers are at work in Ukraine, and that presence has only increased following Putin’s invasion. But influence is not the same as force, and coups imply force.
The impact of this influence was also tepid at best. In fact, the litmus test for whether this was even a coup at all is simple: was the coup successful?
THE FAILED “COUP”
The last piece to consider is whether a puppet—a critical part of any coup—replaced Yanukovych. Once again, the truth is predictably anti-climactic.
After Yanukovych fled the country in February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament voted 328-0 to officially impeach and remove him as president. Taking his place as acting president was the uncontroversial Oleksandr Turchynov. He had assumed the role of acting prime minister back in 2010 when Yulia Tymoshenko lost her re-election and a vote of no confidence removed her administration.
This is important. Ukrainian voters did not choose her in the May 2014 election either. She failed to anticipate the public’s complete lack of trust in her following allegations of corruption. She lost in a landslide—54.7% to 12.81%. The point here is not why she lost but that she lost—and lost badly. If the coup masters wanted a puppet, why wouldn’t they pick her?
She lost to another oligarch, Viktor Poroshenko, despite the fact that she was already a proven asset for the West. In 2008, she signed a joint statement with then-president Viktor Yushenko to seek membership in NATO. She also attended the Bucharest summit months later to lobby for it, but Germany objected. Germany has become increasingly dependent on Russian energy—and Putin was in attendance at this summit.
That is why, immediately following her release from prison in 2014, she quickly courted Germany—picking the ball up right where she left it. Her allegiance to NATO was no secret, yet she lost anyway. She failed to capitalize on her political martyrdom because Ukrainians no longer trusted her.
Instead, the voters chose Poroshenko, who was also a founding member of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. The West liked him, but mostly because of his various anti-Russian policies.
However, when the Ukrainian authorities later investigated Poroshenko for corruption, they revealed that he and his associates had ties to the Kremlin. One of these associates, Viktor Medvedchuk, negotiated energy deals with Russia and its proxies on behalf of Poroshenko. In particular, the Kyiv Independent reported:
‘Tapes released by the Bihus.info investigative journalism project in June revealed new information on relations between Poroshenko and Medvedchuk.
Specifically, Medvedchuk has allegedly discussed introducing an intermediary company, believed to be controlled by Poroshenko, into Ukrainian power supplies to the Russian-annexed Crimea. Medvedchuk has also allegedly delayed a prisoner of war exchange with Russia and its proxies in order to help Poroshenko stage a publicity stunt with a Ukrainian prisoner, Bihus.info reported.
Moreover, Medvedchuk held negotiations on natural gas supplies with Russia on Poroshenko’s behalf, according to the tapes.”
In case you’re not making the connection here, Medvedchuk also has a teenage daughter who just so happens to be Putin’s goddaughter. If Poroshenko is indeed a puppet of the West, it would seem strange to pick someone with friends like that.
Despite all of this, Ukrainians elected the Western-aligned Poroshenko in a landslide victory—the emphasis is on “elected.”
International observers declared this election as fair. Specifically, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe concluded that the election:
“…was characterized by high voter turnout and the clear resolve of the authorities to hold what was a genuine election largely in line with international commitments and with a respect for fundamental freedoms in the vast majority of the country. This was despite the hostile security environment in two eastern regions and the increasing attempts to derail the process by armed groups in these parts of the country.”
In other words, the election was about as fair as it could have been, considering part of the country was simultaneously fighting off occupiers.
Western media fondly remembered Poroshenko’s presidency because he modernized the country and made it easier to do business with. He also brought the country closer to NATO, despite his ties to the Kremlin. It’s not hard to see why.
Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea was a brazen mafia-like covert operation that nobody saw coming. It has done more to convince the Ukranians to ally with the West than anything that happened before it. It is simply absurd to think that Poroshenko was a Western-backed puppet because any other president would need to respond to a constituency that begged for Western protection as the Ukrainians did.
Poroshenko eventually lost his re-election bid because many Ukrainians saw him as an oligarch who failed to bring any corrupt officials to justice. Poroshenko lost to a comedian and political newcomer, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky did not initiate the push to join NATO, however. By the time Zelensky was elected, the pursuit of NATO membership was already official Ukrainian policy. Interestingly, Zelenzky ruffled feathers by appearing to seek a reversal of this policy by dismissing well-known reformers in the Ukrainian government. He was looked down on by his peers until Russia’s invasion and his bucking of Western ambitions turned into outright begging.
SO, BASICALLY…
Occam’s Razor says that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Of course, many aspects of the Ukrainian conflict involve a level of complexity that remains to be explored, and I’ve only scratched the surface. Still, the basic explanation here is pretty clear.
Yanukovych betrayed the people of Ukraine. He reversed course on the EU deal, capitulated to Russia for very little in return, and brutalized his own people. Parliament unanimously removed him. Finally, a subsequent democratic election, which international observers found to be fair, provided Ukraine with a new leader. That’s it.
Any argument that focuses on Western influences and leaves out these basic facts is misrepresenting the entire course of events. It amounts to a cluster of lies by omitting most of the background.
At the same time conspiracy theorists are doing this, they continue to downplay Putin’s increasing crimes. Putin criminalized war criticism, for example, and forces the grieving families of Russian soldiers to have funerals in secret for fear that the true cost of Putin’s war becomes known.
Conspiracy theorists expect us to ignore Putin’s crimes and, instead, focus on the freedom-seeking Ukrainian citizens that started an underground video network with seed money from Western influencers. Talk about punching down.
It’s simple. Ukraine is a country that is mired in corruption, and its people are tired of being played. They now largely feel like Russia is the bad actor, and that’s because it is.
If you take nothing away from this, let it be this: The 2014 coup theory is insulting.
There is a reason that the Maidan protests are referred to by Ukrainians as the “Revolution of Dignity”. Calling the events of 2014 a “coup” robs the people of Ukraine of their agency. It says that they are too stupid to know what’s best for them.
Don’t do that. Be pragmatic and look at the big picture. Realize that most of what you have heard or read about this conspiracy theory originated from the very lips of Putin himself.
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