Ukraine: Was the Overthrow of Yanukovych a ‘Coup’?

Eric Zuesse

INTRODUCTION

This question is important, because it concerns the validity, or not, of the rationale for the economic sanctions against Russia, and of the NATO military buildup against Russia on Russia’s borders (which latter buildup now threatens World War III).

On the American/NATO side of this dispute, both the sanctions and the military buildup against Russia have been alleged to be justified responses to Russia’s ‘seizure’ of Crimea, from Ukraine.

However, Russia contends that there was no such ‘seizure’ of Crimea, and that Crimeans’ separation from Ukraine and joining Russia was instead an entirely voluntary act by Crimeans — a fulfillment by Crimeans of their fundamental right of self-determination of peoples — and that it was precipitated by what Russia alleges to have been a “coup” in Ukraine that created not only an illegitimate regime in Ukraine but a suddenly intensified desire of Crimeans to break away from Ukraine, and to rejoin with Russia, of which Crimea had been a part until Crimea was involuntarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.

The Russian government claims that Russia has protected the right of Crimeans to make this crucial choice, and that Russia enabled Crimeans voluntarily to rejoin Russia, after Crimeans had been forced to become part of Ukraine in 1954 — and that, now, after the “coup” in Kiev, Crimeans intensely wanted to rejoin Russia.

Russia contends that The West, not Russia, has been, and is, insisting upon dictatorship regarding the Crimean people, by The West’s refusing to respect the right of self-determination of peoples, to the Crimean population, whom Russia has protected and enabled peacefully to exercise that inalienable right, which any people possess the peaceful right to do.

No one can deny that the overthrow of Victor Yanukovych — the democratically elected President of Ukraine, who had won 75% of the votes of the people of Crimea — led directly to the movement of the Crimean people to separate themselves from being ruled by the newly installed, post-overthrow, Ukrainian government.

Without the violent overthrow of Yanukovych, there would have been no reason for Crimeans to have been in fear. But the question remains of whether the separation of Crimea from Ukraine was a legitimate act of self-determination of peoples, by the Crimeans, in response to a coup (such as Russia contends to have been the case), or was it instead a ‘seizure’ of Crimea by Russia — a seizure against which The West legitimately retaliated by economic sanctions, and now by sending arms (including nuclear weapons) and troops to Russia’s very borders?

So, this question of whether or not the overthrow of Yanukovych was a “coup” — an illegitimate takeover of the Ukrainian government — is absolutely central to world history, at the present stage.

If it was a coup, then all of The West’s sanctions and arms-buildups against Russia since that coup are on fraudulent grounds and thus entirely illegitimate; but if it was not a “coup,” then at least an argument can be made by The West, that The West’s response to Russia’s subsequent actions (especially The West’s response to Russia’s accepting the broadly expressed will of the Crimean public to quit Ukraine and rejoin Russia) isn’t disproportionate to Russia’s actions — (even if Russia did what The West alleges, such as ‘seizing’ Crimea).

What can it mean for Russia to be said to have “seized” Crimea?

No one questions that the overwhelming majority of Crimeans wanted to quit Ukraine and join Russia after Yanukovych was overthrown — one Western poll of Crimeans after Crimea had separated from Ukraine and joined Russia showed that 82.8% of Crimeans said “Agree,” and only 6.7% (less than a tenth as many) said “Disagree,” to the statement “The results of the referendum on Crimea’s status likely reflect the views of most people here,” and another Western poll after Crimeans had done it, confirmed that over 90% of Crimeans supported the change.

Did they not have the right of self-determination of peoples, which even The West recognizes in The West, such as for Catalonians in Spain, for Scotts in UK, and for Quebecois in Canada?

Though Western-controlled bodies such as the OSCE in post-coup Crimea, announced that condition #5 for automatic recognition, which is “their parent state shall flagrantly violate their human rights”, had not been met, overwhelming evidence existed to the contrary and was blatantly ignored, even while the OSCE’s investigator acknowledged that “There is a real risk of bloodshed”, and much bloodshed had already occurred but was simply being ignored by her.

So, the official statements on this matter cannot reasonably be trusted, and appear to have been based upon who held real power, not on application of authentically neutral and ethically founded principles, and those statements thus granted the post-overthrow, now Western-backed, Ukrainian government everything they wanted. ‘The international community’ failed the people of Crimea and made a farce out of ‘international law’ in this case — especially if the overthrow of Yanukovych was a coup.

The West and its international organs are enforcing the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev’s arbitrary 1954 transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, and are utterly denying the residents of Crimea their sovereign right of self-determination, even denying their right to reverse that dictator’s arbitrary action, taken 60 years prior to Crimea’s 2014 Russian-reunification referendum. The West has now taken on the dictatorial role, which The West had claimed to have opposed in principle during the Cold War.

As Himanil Raina said in regard to the authority of the post-overthrow Ukrainian government, in the case of Crimea:

“A greater problem however relates to the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government itself given the Russian position that the government came to power by means of a coup d’état,” and, “Ultimately, regardless of the West’s assertions on any other point, the fact is that Yanukovych was elected to power via elections declared fair by Western monitors themselves. As Kym Bergman has commented, baying mobs no matter what their size present no justification to remove a constitutionally elected President from power.”

Raina wasn’t alleging that the overthrow necessarily was a “coup,” but instead that even if it was a democratic revolution, the government it produced was illegitimate and thus possessed no authentic status of national government under the Ukrainian Constitution, for it to cite that Constitution against Crimeans’ intrinsic right of self-determination.

Only fools don’t care about getting to the truth here, because the truth here answers the question of whether the violator of international law in our time, and the source of the present buildup toward World War III, is Russia, by accepting the overwhelming desire of the Crimean people to separate from Ukraine and to rejoin with Russia, or whether the violator is instead The West, by the West’s now sanctioning Russia and militarily threatening to invade Russia on account of Russia’s having accepted the will of the Crimean people to rejoin with Russia.

This question of whether the separation of Crimea from Ukraine was in response to a coup in Ukraine, is thus the central question in our era of history: the question of whether the source of blame for bringing the world to its current brink of nuclear war is partly Russia’s and is partly The West’s (for The West’s overreacting to Russia’s illegitimate seizure of Crimea); or whether it’s instead entirely The West’s fault (for The West’s having, to begin with, illegitimately seized Ukraine by a U.S. coup, and then fraudulently charged and sanctioned and threatened Russia as having ‘seized’ Crimea).

STRATFOR’S POSITION ON THIS

On 20 December 2014, I reported that in a Russian business publication published in the Russian language the day before, the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor, George Friedman, was quoted as telling that publication in an interview, that the overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in February of that year had been “the most blatant coup in history.”

Subsequently (on 17 January 2015), that complete interview was translated into English, where the entire context of his statement on this important matter can be seen and evaluated.

Perhaps because Mr. Friedman’s firm relies heavily upon and cooperates with the U.S. CIA, he publicly renounced the publication of his statement on this matter, when he headlined on 21 April 2016 at the website of the convicted Wall Street fraudster Henry Blodget, Business Insider, “George Friedman: Russia is winning the internet”, and Friedman portrayed “the Russians” there as master deceivers, and mentioned in this regard, as if it were said only in passing:

So: who is falsifying here? Is it “the Russians”? Or is it George Friedman (now saying “it was no coup”)?

Let’s go back to the entire passage in which he had said that the overthrow of Yanukovych was “the most blatant coup in history,” as it had been translated on 17 January 2015 (so that we can see the complete context there):

The article by Friedman denying that he had actually meant that the overthrow of Yanukovych was “the most blatant coup in history,” and that really “it was no coup,” had an impact.

It was subsequently cited by readers at reddit, in order to (so they thought) ‘disconfirm’ a news report that I had just published on 7 June 2016, which was headlined “Germany Preparing For War Against Russia”. That article by me was criticized at reddit for two reasons. One was that the website which had published it, rinf.com, is little-known and is therefore “an ‘alternative news’ source. it might be an alternative to reality.”

In other words: it was criticized because the website that published it wasn’t part of the newsmedia that are big enough so that the people who control the U.S. newsmedia buy it out or else put it out of existence altogether. But, in any case, it was ad-hominem.

Then appeared there the second reason, in this response at reddit:

I tracked the sources cited against Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, in that wikipedia article (which was the only source cited by the commenter, and which source was indeed a prominent one in my article that this person was attacking), and found no indication that there had been anything against DWN there beyond the ordinary types of post-publication editorial corrections which are made by all serious newsmedia, including by extremely famous ones.

Consequently, the reader-comments at reddit were disbelieving on false grounds, and were believing on false grounds. The readers were evidently so determined to rationalize their existing beliefs, as to be critical against whatever disconfirms them, and to accept, on shoddy (if any) grounds, whatever they can find that they think somehow discredits the allegations that are contrary to their existing beliefs (basically rationalizing, on an ad-hominem level, against an ad-rem argument that they find personally unpalatable to believe).

Any reader of the present article can make up his or her own mind on the matter at hand, simply by clicking onto the links that are being here provided.

Before proceeding directly onto the broader issue of the evidence that the overthrow of Yanukovych was a coup (which central issue any reader here is now invited to skip directly down to, if so choosing), it might be worth pointing out in the present context, that the readership at reddit tends to be rabidly predisposed to detest Russia. Here is just one other recent example of that evidence of the success of this heavy indoctrination by the American ‘news’ media, so as to make clear the widespread prejudice that exists on this:

THE BROADER ISSUE

Beyond that narrow issue of what Mr. Friedman had to say on this subject, of whether or not it was a “coup,” the evidence is overwhelming, and is as conclusive as any can be in important historical questions such as this (important especially because its outcome might become a nuclear World War III), that the overthrow of Yanukovych was, indeed, a “coup,” and that the breakaway of Crimea from Ukraine was a direct consequence of the coup.

Extensive video documentation exists demonstrating that it was a coup, and even demonstrating that the Obama Administration had selected Ukraine’s post-coup leader 22 days prior to his being formally appointed by the Ukrainian parliament.

Furthermore, the only detailed scholarly study of the evidence that has been performed came to the same conclusion — that it was a U.S. coup.

The last month before the coup was incredibly violent, with Obama’s hired fascists attacking the government’s securitly forces brutally: Here is some of the bloodshed from the prior month, on January 21st, then January 22nd, then January 25th.

Moreover, immediately after the overthrow, when the EU sent its own investigator into Kiev to report back on how the overthrow had taken place, he too reported that it had been a coup. Subsequently revealed was that the Obama Administration had started preparing the coup inside the U.S. Embassy in Kiev by no later than 1 March 2013 — almost a year prior to the coup.

Also, the even earlier preparation for the coup, extending through decades, on the part of CIA-affiliated ‘nonprofit’ or NGO organizations (funded by Western aristocrats and their corporations), laying the groundwork for this coup, has been brilliantly documented at some online sites.

None of this information has been widely published — it’s virtually not at all published in The West. Though the potential audience for it might be vast (especially since Western publics pay much of the tab for this operation and yet receive none of the benefits from the resultant looting of Ukraine, which goes all to aristocrats in the U.S. and allied aristocracies), the market in The West for reporting it, is virtually nil, because the market is The West’s news media, and they’ve all (except for a few small ones like this) been taken over by the aristocracy, and serve the aristocracy — not the public (their audiences, whom they’re in business to deceive).

The aristocracy’s companies advertise in, and thereby fund, most of those ‘news’ media, and the aristocracy’s governments fund the rest — and the public pays for that, too, not just by being manipulated to vote for the aristocracy’s politicians, but by being taxed to pay what the NGOs and their aristocrats don’t (so the public are buying the weapons etc.). It’s a vast money-funnel, from the many, to the few.

Though the transfer of Crimea from Ukraine to Russia is treated by Western ‘news’ media as having been a ‘conquest’ by Russia, and as being Russia’s ‘seizure’ of Crimea, and Russia’s ‘stealing’ Crimea, nothing of the sort is true (and Crimeans had good reason to be terrified of the Obama-coup regime that had just been installed, from which Russia saved Crimeans), but the lie needs to be promulgated in order for the aristocracy’s invasion of Russia to be able to be organized and carried out (if they’ll go all the way in this).

In addition, there was also the far eastern, Donbass, region of Ukraine, which also refused to accept the coup that overthrew Yanukovych, and which likewise separated itself from Ukraine after the coup. Donbass had voted 90% for Yanukovych — even higher than did Crimea. Barack Obama and his followers blamed Russia for supposedly trying to ‘seize’ Donbass too.

However, on 17 September 2014, a leader of Donbass announced “We will build our own country” because Putin had made clear to Donbass’s leaders that he wasn’t going to allow Donbass to become a part of Russia as he had done in the case of Crimea.

Then, on Monday 6 April 2015, the Moscow Times bannered “Putin Refused Poroshenko’s Offer to ‘Take Donbass’ — Forbes”, and reported that “President Vladimir Putin in February turned down an offer from his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko to ‘take the Donbass’ — the area in the country’s east that is currently partly controlled by pro-Russian insurgents — and asked Poroshenko whether he was ‘out of his mind,’ Forbes magazine reported Monday.”

That day, Forbes had headlined (with perhaps intentional obscurantism so as not to attract attention to, or make waves about, this matter), “Donbass Russia: Putin talked about the unexpected assertion by Poroshenko”, and reported that “at a closed meeting with the Board” of a Russian business association, “one of the participants at the meeting, who requested confidentiality, confirmed to Forbes, that Putin had told the businessmen of an unexpected proposal from Poroshenko to take Donbass and his refusal to do that. ‘Poroshenko offered Russia to take the Donbass and provide its financial support’ [said the source].”

The confusingly written news story provided half-baked explanations as to why Putin said no, and then concluded by quoting one ‘expert’ who said that, “The offer from Poroshenko that Russia ’take Donbass’ does not look believable — perhaps the phrase was uttered as a joke.” That was no ‘expert’: he evidently didn’t even know about Putin’s having earlier told Donbass leaders that Russia wasn’t going to accept Donbass into Russia.

Finally, in regards to the legitimacy-or-not of the overthrow of Yanukovych, all of the arguments that have been put forth by the Obama Administration and its Ukrainian regime (and the rest of The West), arguing that the overthrow of Yanukovych was legitimate, were decisively disproven by an extraordinarily honest and thorough — and starkly clear — anonymous web-posting, “Yanukovych’s Removal Was Unconstitutional”, wherein the Ukrainian Constitution’s provisions for the “ways in which a president can be removed from power” were contrasted with the steps that actually were taken by Ukraine’s parliament in order to remove Yanukovych, and it showed that, definitely and incontestably, Yanukovych was not Constitutionally removed from power.

The successor government — including all its actions and assertions that were made against both Crimea and Donbass — were illegal even under Ukrainian law. The West hasn’t got a legal leg to stand on in this matter, but has instead trumped that by its sheer and raw coercive power, in a global world order that is thereby exposed as being lawless in the most profound sense: truly a law-of-the-jungle world-order.

In any case, The West is continuing to accuse Russia of attempting to ‘seize’ Donbass, after Russia had allegedly ‘seized’ Crimea — and a global nuclear war could ultimately result from these Western lies. But the master-lie is The West’s Big Lie, that the overthrow of Yanukovych “was no coup.” The aggressor is clearly The West, not Russia.

And that is where the danger comes from. And, on a deep level, despite The West’s propaganda, this fact is even widely recognized around the world.

On 14 June 2016, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) held an international conference in Stockholm, to which the following stunningly obtuse question, regarding the supposedly puzzling motivations behind Russia’s supposedly aggressive recent national security moves, was posed on the invitation to the event, as being the topic for supposed analysis, by the supposed ‘experts’:

An analogy for such obtuseness, during the 1930s, would have been if there were, at that time, an international scholarly conference held in order to explain the exodus of Jews from Germany. Of course, at that time, the global response to the endangered people was to intensify anti-Jewish immigration policies and thereby make the escape by those negatively-stereotyped victims even more difficult.

The response this time around is for a scholarly supposed ‘charity’ to hold a ridiculous international conference to supposedly explain why the Russian people are terrified at being surrounded by 800 foreign U.S. military bases and by an entire NATO military alliance, aiming missiles against them, and calling their country such things as the “number one geopolitical foe.”

The difference is that, this time, the intended target-victims are armed with nuclear weapons, just as are the aspiring victimizers. And there’s also a second important difference: that, this time around, the public, in the nations that are aspiring to victimize, have no realistic idea at all, about what’s really happening. Unlike in Germany during the 1930s, the signs of the change aren’t visible on any street, such as, for example, the forcing of Jews then to wear on their clothing a sign that they were “Jude.”

Also, in Germany during the 1930s, Adolf Hitler was basically more honest about his intentions, than America’s Barack Obama has been about his. However, the origin of Obama’s lie about that, goes all the way back to former U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush.

NOTE: This article was rejected by the CFR’s journal Foreign Affairs, no reason was given.