DISINFO: Russia was literally forced to launch a special operation in Ukraine
SUMMARY
Russia was literally forced to launch a special operation in Ukraine, and we are being blamed.
But we didn't organise the coup d'état in Ukraine, you understand? We were told all the time what we needed - democracy, elections... They carried out a coup d'état, and that's it, as if that's how it should be. A bloody coup. And they went on to suppress Donbass and so on, to kill people from helicopters and planes. It's just ridiculous. They forced us to simply do what we are doing now. And they are trying to make us guilty of this... They need to be strangled, because they are trying to strangle us. We need to reciprocate, that's all!
RESPONSE
Collection of recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives justifying Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, including by referencing broadly debunked claims painting the 2013-14 protests in Kyiv as a coup d'état, portraying the Ukrainian leadership as pathologically Russophobic and accusing Ukraine of mistreating the country's Russian-speaking population. These aim to deflect responsibility for the war waged by Russia in Ukraine.
Russia's aggression against Ukraine was unprovoked and unjustified.
Russia is the only country responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. It has been coming up with different manipulative explanations and false pretexts for its aggression since the beginning of its hostilities. It cited denazifying and demilitarising Ukraine as well as ensuring its neutral status as among the main reasons for the full-scale invasion at the beginning. Protecting the residents of the self-proclaimed separatist entities in Eastern Ukraine from alleged genocide and imposing the use of the Russian language in Ukraine were also cited.
The Russian invasion is aimed at destroying Ukraine as a state and annihilating the Ukrainians as a nation. These plans were openly laid out in an article titled “What Russia should do with Ukraine” in April 2022. See also our review here.
It was Putin’s personal decision to invade Ukraine and start the largest military conflict in Europe since WWII.
There was no sudden violent seizure of power in Kyiv in 2014, this is a longstanding pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Ukraine's Euromaidan. The spontaneous onset of the Euromaidan protests was a reaction by numerous segments of the Ukrainian population to former president Viktor Yanukovych’s sudden departure from the promised Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013.
There is no evidence that either ethnic Russians or Russian speakers are facing persecution at the hands of the Ukrainian authorities, much less the danger of annihilation on grounds of nationality, ethnicity, or cultural belonging. This has been confirmed by reports issued by the Council of Europe, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the OSCE.
Since 2014, Russia has waged large-scale armed aggression against Ukraine. It is responsible for the outbreak of the conflict in 2014, after having illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula and engineered the creation of rebel militias in Donetsk, Luhansk and other places, with its army actively participating in military clashes.
Read similar cases: Russia was forced to attack Ukraine in February 2022; A violent coup d’état took place in Ukraine in 2014; the US supported the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine; the EU supported an unconstitutional coup d'état in Ukraine led by the US; The Ukrainian regime came to power through an illegal, unconstitutional coup d'état; Russia forced into a conflict in "historical Russia".