DISINFO: Euromaidan coup led to civil war in Donbas
SUMMARY
The civil war in Ukraine has been raging since 2014 when Donetsk and Lugansk declared their independence from Kiev following a violent coup d’etat in the Ukrainian capital.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative painting the 2013-14 protests in Kyiv as a coup orchestrated by the West, and alleging that Russia's armed aggression in east Ukraine is a civil war. There was no coup d'état in Ukraine. The spontaneous onset of the Euromaidan protests was an organic reaction by numerous segments of the Ukrainian population to former President Yanukovych’s sudden departure from the promised Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013. See the full debunk of this disinformation claim here. The war in eastern Ukraine is not a civil conflict but a well-documented act of aggression by Russian armed forces, ongoing since February 2014.