DISINFO: US organised a coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014 to install a neo-Nazi regime hostile to Russia
SUMMARY
In 2014 the United States spent $5 billion organising NGOs, students, and buying Ukrainian politicians to support a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Ukrainian government and install a neo-Nazi regime hostile to Russia.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Ukraine's Euromaidan protests, depicting the 2013-14 revolution as a coup d'état and laying responsibility for the ensuing Russian aggression on the West, and and about Nazi Ukraine.
There was no coup d’état in Kyiv in 2014. The spontaneous onset of the Euromaidan protests was not provoked externally, rather, it was a reaction from several segments of the Ukrainian population to former President Yanukovych’s sudden departure from the promised Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013, after pressure from Russia.
The claim that the US spent $5 billion to overthrow Viktor Yanukovych is misleading. The Maidan protests were primarily a reaction by Ukrainian civil society to the government's rejection of the EU Association Agreement.
This claim is linked to a statement by former US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland in late 2013. Then she said that the United States has invested $5 billion in more than 20 years to develop democratic processes and reforms in Ukraine. The diplomat said that this is the total amount of assistance that Washington has allocated to Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Money was allocated for fair elections, to fight corruption and to develop the energy sector. Victoria Nuland later frequently repeated these thesis, including in various interviews.
The myth of Nazi-ruled Ukraine has long been a cornerstone of pro-kremlin disinformation efforts. This has already been widely debunked and addressed on EUvsDisinfo.
Read similar disinformation narratives alleging that The Revolution of Dignity 2014 in Ukraine was a pogrom conducted by NATO-backed Nazis, that The West funded the Ukrainian coup with $5 billion, the US organised a coup in Ukraine and European countries submissively supported it, that EU and US interference and coup in Ukraine caused the armed conflict in Donbas and that The US spent five billion dollars to overthrow Viktor Yanukovych.