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Comment by Isinlor | Hacker News Reader

Yes - USA was involved, as was Russia, France, Poland and Germany.

I agree that discussing who should and should not be in the government of an independent state is wrong.

But there was no coup and Yanukovych himself signed an agreement whose first point stipulated government change, Yanukovych decided to flee on his own and Yanukovych was impeached by democratically elected parliament.

USA did not start the protests. The protests started because people, especially around Kyiv, wanted and still want more than ever across the whole Ukraine to join EU. Yanukovych was elected with the promise of joining EU as a strategic goal.

At the same time, on 27 February 2014, masked Russian troops without insignia took over the Supreme Council (parliament) of Crimea and captured strategic sites across Crimea. Crimea was annexed on 18 March 2014 by Russia.

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>Yanukovych decided to flee on his own

What on earth does that even mean?

If you watch the videos the entire city was on fire and the "peaceful protestors" were firing rocket propelled grenades at the police force. And the Democratically elected leader, Yanukovych, had to flee the country and give control over to the insurrectionists or he would have been murdered.

I guess you can say "That wasn't a coup" if you like, but we would really just arguing about semantics here.

The protests were peaceful at the very begging in November 2013. Then protests were dispersed and the spiral of violence escalation started culminating in death of around 100 protesters and less than 20 police officers in February 2014.

Towards the end it was certainly not a peaceful ordeal. It was more of a small uprising.

I recall snipers shooting to protestors.

But I don't recall RPGs being used by either side when I was following it. I could not find any mention of it right now. Any sources of that claim?

On Feb 21st 2014, the EU foreign ministers and Yanukovich signed on a deal where there would be speedy elections — that would most certainly remove Yanukovich from power, somewhere in spring.

But on Feb 22nd, the protesters refuse that deal and seize Yanukovich's palace, stripping him of power immediately. After which he flees.

It's that seizing of the palace and rejecting the EU-brokered deal is what is usually called "the coup".

The deal signed on Feb 21st 2014 says:

1. Within 48 hours after the signing of this agreement will be adopted, signed and promulgated a special law that will restore the action of the Constitution of 2004, as amended by this time. The signatories declare their intention to create a coalition and form a national unity government within 10 days thereafter.

On February 22, 2014 as allowed by Article 111 of the Ukrainian Constitution, Verkhovna Rada decided to impeach Yanukovich with 328 votes for, 0 against and 122 not present or abstaining.

According to the Constitution of Ukraine, impeachment would have involved a) formally charging the president with a crime; b) a review of the charge by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine; and c) a three-fourths majority vote – i.e. at least 338 votes in favor – by the Rada.

Of that three — that all had to happen — exactly zero happened. Instead, the Verkhovna Rada declared that Yanukovych "withdrew from his duties in an unconstitutional manner" and cited "circumstances of extreme urgency" as the reason for early elections.

This can be taken to a direction of "democratic transfer of power under extraordinary circumstances". This also can be taken to a direction of "unconstitutional coup d'etat". The direction depends on the goals one's trying to achieve.

Because a popular revolution shouldn't be labelled a "US-backed coup", and labelling it as such strips agency from the protesters who made it happen. Getting the label right is important given that this is a critical part of the Kremlin's justification for the invasion: casting the current Ukrainian government as illegitimate, and stripping Ukrainians of agency and their identity.

The evidence that it was a US-backed coup is quite weak; from Nuland's leaked call, to Nuland handing out sandwiches to protesters, to the speculative opinions of Estonia's FM, to the few billions of investments the US has made into civic institutions since 1991 -- it's a little bit of smoke if you squint really hard and apply a good dose of confirmation bias, while simultaneously sweeping under the rug Russia's more aggressive colonial meddling in Ukraine (such as Yushchenko's poisoning).

Maybe better evidence will emerge later about 2014 as records are declassified (such as it did with Diem's overthrow), it's possible and wouldn't be surprising, but barring better evidence, it needs to be labelled the 2014 Maidan Revolution, or something similar.

Yes. Westerners and Russians seems to think that everything is organized by USA and that people of other nations do not have any autonomy.

A lot of people seem to think that Poland or Baltic states were somehow forced into NATO. Certainly narrative that China is trying to sell right now.

We knew very well that aligning ourselves with Russia is just straight road to disaster. And we needed to get as far as possible as soon as possible from Russian imperialism when we had a small window of opportunity.

Ukraine was split on it and it did result in disaster.

> everything is organized by USA and that people of other nations do not have any autonomy

This is not an either-or proposition: the truth could well be that there were (lots of) people who wanted a regime change AND the US State Department intervened.

What do you mean by "intervened"? That they talked to people? Sure, they did talk to people.

They designated a leader for the future government and vetoed other leaders from joining it. You can spin it as “they talked to people” all you want.

It's not a spin. The word "intervened" may mean anything from talking to people to military intervention. USA officials talked about who would be good for them in Ukrainian government, granted some loans etc., while Russia put soldiers in Crimea parliament, annexed Ukraine territory and started war that continues till this day.

USA talked, while Russia started a war. Both can be understood as interventions, but they are not equivalent.

> Both can be understood as interventions

And both are wrong.

> but they are not equivalent

And still, both are wrong.

Technically true, but this reeks of false balance fallacy. The US recognizing that Yatsenyuk will inevitably take power (given that he was the most popular opposition politician by far) and strategizing about factional politics following a brewing revolution is just categorically different to annexing territory and poisoning opponent politicians.

Read my comments above in this discussion tree.

> I agree that discussing who should and should not be in the government of an independent state is wrong.

But annexing a piece of land is just on a completely different level.

There is no equivalency and you should not be trying to create it.

> There is no equivalency

There's also no equivalency between a serial killer who killed 10 people and a serial killer who killed 100 people.

> and you should not be trying to create it

I'm not trying to create any equivalency. But if these two serial killers are fighting each other to death, may I please be excused from rooting for one of them?

> Because a popular revolution shouldn't be labelled a "US-backed coup"

What do you suggest we label a situation where the US government officials get in touch with people opposing the regime in a foreign country, in protests (that turned violent) and talk to their leaders, designating one of them to lead the future government and vetoing some of them from joining that future government?

(Note that the leaked Pyatt-Nuland call is from before Feb 5th. They apparently talked to Yatsenyuk to lead the future gov't, and they are discussing that Klitchko and Tyahnibok stay out while supporting it. On Feb 27th the new gov't is sworn in, lead by Yatsenyuk, with Klitchko and Tyahnibok on the outside.)

On similar note, what would you call a situation where Russian gov't would get in touch with people opposing the ruling US order and organize a regime change in US? "Popular Revolution" or "Russia-instilled coup"?

The leaked call reveals little novel information. Nuland was already having public meetings with Yatsenyuk, Klitschko, and others on the eve of the revolution. It's a foregone conclusion that such meetings were to exercise US influence to promote the US foreign policy position on what ought to happen if the government was to get toppled in a revolution.[1] This isn't evidence that the US instigated the revolution, or that the US was a big part of the factors behind the revolution. It's "US-backed" in the weakest sense of the US having communicated their desired outcome if the revolution came to pass after the ball was already set in motion by Ukrainians.

That's why we shouldn't label it a US-backed coup. That label connotes a large degree of involvement and influence over the causal factors underlying the revolution which can't be supported.

If the US followed Russia's tactics and poisoned pro-Russian Ukrainian leaders, or sowed disinformation in their media ecosystem, then sure, the label of a US-backed coup would be more than appropriate.

[1] Actually, this is me being overly generous. While that is one possible interpretation, another is that they simply recognized that Yatsenyuk will take power due to his overwhelming popularity among Ukrainian people, and are simply trying to preempt and manage the inevitable factional politics that could arise post-revolution.

What would we call a situation where Russian foreign minister and their ambassador to Washington would contact and meet the leaders of the March on the Capitol, and dictate them what the future US government — if that March succeeded — would look like?

The US went ballistic over the idea that Russians interfered in their elections by publishing emails. The direct contacts would turn them super-ballistic.

> a situation where Russian foreign minister and their ambassador to Washington would contact and meet the leaders of the March on the Capitol

If Russia played no role in instigating the conditions of the revolt, and if Russia was a close US ally, then I would not call that a Russia-backed coup attempt.

The analogy doesn't fit, though, because Russia wasn't an ally, it was an adversary with its heart set on undermining US democracy. And Russia did play a role in the events that caused the revolt, with the purported stealing and releasing of the DNC's and Podesta's private e-mails, strategically leaked immediately after the Access Hollywood tape. One could make a case that these leaks got Trump elected due to the thin margins that he carried he election by, and that the leaks created an atmosphere of deep-state conspiracy thinking in the US public that made people more pliable to Trump's stolen election lies.

Maybe a better analogy would be Russia overtly supporting some popular movement in Mexico.

>I agree that discussing who should and should not be in the government of an independent state is wrong."

If you think that involvement was limited purely to "discussion" I have a nice bridge for sale.

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