Ukrainian 2014 revolution as a KGB plot?

I often hear that US CIA plotted and orchestrated the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity in 2014 (also known as Euromaidan, also referred to as a Anticonsitutional Coup by pro-Russian media). No real proofs are given, but no proofs are needed for a conspiracy theory. Those who believe it, don’t care about proofs. However, what I want to show that it’s also easy to make Euromaidan to look as an insidious Russian plan, staged by KGB (renamed to FSB in recent years). All logical, with same amount of proofs (i.e. none).

A disclaimer for those who don’t understand sarcasm:

I do not claim what is written below is true, quite the opposite. I simply want to show that CIA staged coup theory is as crazy as KGB staged coup theory.

Another disclaimer — I will play the “USA vs Russia geopolitics chess game”, which I think is an imperialistic view on the world and I don’t share it. Please keep it in mind. So now a conspiracy theory that Maidan was staged by Russian KGB follows.

Cui bono?

The first thing we need to ask is — who benefited from the Euromaidan in 2014? This is the first question we need to ask whenever anything happens.

The USA definitely did not benefit from it. It was very complicated to add Ukraine into NATO now with all the conflicts around Ukraine, since it would anger other NATO members who would not want to fight for Ukraine. EU did not benefit from this either. Germany — the biggest EU player had a very tight economic connections to Russia, in particular — natural gas. They did not want the instability in the region, they did not want to break ties with Russia.

However Russia benefited from it quite a lot. An obvious fact — they annexed Crimea, which was a long standing wish for them. They wanted to annex other Ukrainian regions on the East and South, but their plan did not work to the end. The Crimea was a win for Russia, there were no real sanctions and Germany agreed on building the Nord Stream 2. Ukraine became an unstable region with a constant war on Donbas and with no NATO or EU membership in sight.

Win for Russia. Loss for the USA. Cui bono successfully answered.

Pre-history

Russia wanted to have a Russian agent (original or converted) sitting in Ukrainian presidential seat, so they could prepare (or rather — un-prepare) Ukraine for the future wars. The idea was to split Ukrainian nation on the Russian language issue (divide et impera — divide and conquer) and weaken Ukrainian military. This would make both civil and military aspects of Ukraine be weak, so they could easily attack.

Unfortunately for Russia, president Kuchma was not as pro-Russian as they wanted him to be. So they decided to put the Russian agent Yanukovich into the presidential seat. They almost succeeded in 2004, but Orange revolution broke their plans. Russians had to wait. With all the Russian support and money, Yanukovich became a Ukrainian Prime minister, gained a political weight and won the elections in 2010, this time with no need for fraud. The pro-Ukrainian parties were not strong nor united that time.

Yanukovich successfully weakened Ukrainian army enough for Russia to invade.

Maidan plot

Russians support various right-wing parties throughout Europe (Marine Le Pen being a good example in France), and Ukraine is not an exception. Russians do this to destabilize the country. Have you noticed it’s parties with extreme views who usually support Russians? This time Russians decided to support “Svoboda”. Take Iryna Farion as an example, who is one of the party leaders. Her being supported by Russia may sound crazy, because she is known for her primitive anti-Russian hatred, but that’s exactly what Russians needed. Did you know that that same Iryna Farion was a member of a Communistic Party? She fiercely rejected it until presented with hard evidence. That time she converted to a Russian agent and started spewing out various primitive anti-Russian narratives, sometimes aimed even at innocent Russian speaking children. This was enough to divide Ukrainian nation and make Russian public to think of Ukrainians as of Nazis.

So on one side Russians controlled Ukrainian presidency, on the other side they controlled the oppositional right-wing Svoboda which miraculously got into the parliament in 2012 and got lots of support.

Russians waited for a chance to start a civil unrest. However Ukrainians, as peaceful nation were not angered enough even by the fact that Russian military base contract in Crimea was prolonged. Yes — Russians controlled a military base on Ukrainian territory. This was against Ukrainian constitution, but Russian agent Yanukovich did not care. But civil unrest did not start.

And when Yanukovich refused to sign an EU agreement, Ukrainians simply went to Maidan for a peaceful protest. No amount of angry words could make them go to storm the presidential palace. So then Yanukovich decided to use force. This succeeded. This angered Ukrainians enough so they went on the streets. Unfortunately for Russia, Ukrainians still were not angry enough to make a coup. They did not even burn the cars nor looted the stores. Svoboda leaders could not force their activists to be too aggressive. Contrary to the party heads, ordinary members of Svoboda were patriotic youth, not pro-Russian agents and could not do the crimes Russia wanted them to do.

An often mentioned Nuland call, where she says that the West should support Yatsenyuk (Yats — as she said) showed that the whole Maidan situation was a surprise for her — they did not prepare leaders upfront. They wanted to end the situation peacefully. EU did not send any troops to help Maidan leaders, nor NATO did. However Russian special forces were readily available both on Maidan to ignite more violence, and in Crimea to wait for a good moment.

After three months of protests on February 21st Yanukovich hesitantly signed a peaceful agreement with leaders of opposition, witnessed by European leaders. And this was absolutely not in Russian plans. Hastily they force Yanukovich to flee to make the whole situation look as a coup. He fled the same day.

But not everything was lost. They still had their Svoboda party at hand. And the first thing Svoboda leaders did in the parliament was to initiate the cancellation of the language law. Even the law was not cancelled this was enough for Russian propaganda to portray Ukrainian parliament as an anti-Russian. Russians thanked Svoboda and invaded Crimea. Thanks to the weakened military Ukraine did not resist. Crimea became Russian.

Then Russia initiated the civil unrests by using their pro-Russian activists in various parts of Ukraine, but succeeded only at two regions — those which had a direct border with Russia so they could get arms easily, I’m talking about Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

After Maidan

Not everything went according to plan. In particular because of patriotic Ukrainian comumnity, which formed Azov and Right Sector among others (that’s why Russians hate them so much), Ukraine stood. Russian plan was to occupy half of Ukraine, start a civil war and prevent presidential election to happen in this chaos. This did not happen. Unfortunately for Russia, Svoboda member Tyahnybok did not win the elections and the party did not even pass into the parliament. Ukrainians were not stupid, they saw that there was something wrong with Svoboda.

There was still a chance. Russians backed the Ukrainian oligarch Kolomoysky, who was in very bad relations with new Ukrainian president — Poroshenko. Kolomoysky persuaded Russians that Zelensky is a naive nobody. He would be a simple puppet in Russians hands. Russians bet on Zelensky and secretly funded his campaign. How surprised they were when Zelensky actually started to find a peaceful solution on Donbas. Not igniting hatred, not surrendering to Russia, but actually looking for a peace plan. And he was close to succeeding. Whether Zelensky was extremely naive, so he did not understood at all who was behind Kolomoysky, or instead he was a brilliant guy, who only pretended to be naive — we won’t know for sure.

The initial Russian plan failed completely. So they decided to invade Ukraine, hoping that Ukrainians would greet them with flowers, Ukrainian Armed Forces angered by Zelensky (who considerably lost support) would switch sides and that they would occupy Ukraine as easily they occupied Crimea. Here they failed miserably.

Conclusion

Everything I wrote is absurd. No need to point that in the comments. But it’s as absurd as a “CIA orchestrated Maidan in 2014”. Still — this is a convincing story. And if you seriously believe conspiracy theories — ask yourself, why this conspiracy theory is worse than yours?

Conspiracy theories can explain everything. Thus they fail to pass the Popper scientific test. And thus they should not be used to explain anything. I hope I gave you a fresh look at the 2014 Maidan.

Why I though this topic was important? I’m tired of those who claim that the USA staged the 2014 coup, so Russia has a right to invade Ukraine. However crazy is this claim, people still use it for some reason.