Photo: http://kp.ua
On November 21, the Ukrainian authorities celebrated Dignity and Freedom Day. It was on this day in 2013 that the first protesters against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to sign the Association Agreement with the EU took to the square in the center of Kiev.
In general, it is the Euromaidan that is the starting point for understanding the causes of both the special military opeartion and many current events.
Cult of Dead
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dedicated his address to Ukraine's Airborne Troops Day, but at the end he said a few words for the Maidan anniversary as well. “Today is the 9th anniversary of the beginning of the Maidan, the revolution of dignity,” Zelensky said.
On this day, Zelensky together with his wife installed the grave candles on Institutskaya Street in the center of Kiev. There is a stand with photos of more than 100 participants of Euromaidan, who were killed in late February 2014. By the way, first President Poroshenko and then Zelensky let the Maidan shootings go unnoticed, and there has been no progress in the case for years. It is much easier to show love for the dead than to investigate the causes of their deaths.
Maybe, this is the right thing to do. God forbid it should turn out that some Euromaidan participants killed others in order to blame the “criminal regime” of Viktor Yanukovich. After all, Euromaidan activist Ivan Bubenchik confessed several years ago in an interview with Bird In Flight that it was he who started shooting Berkut fighters with Kalashnikovs from the conservatory building, located on the Maidan. In April 2018, Ukrainian law enforcers even detained Bubenchik on suspicion of killing Berkut special forces officers in February 2014 and brought him to trial in Kiev. But a few weeks later, the Kiev Pechersky District Court released the murder suspect on the bail of the people's deputies and the case stalled.
“Our strength is rooted in the Maidan, where our Ukrainian freedom united with our dignity,” said the former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. He himself, despite his magniloquence, had long ago taken his entire family abroad so as not to be endangered during the fighting.
Dragging Along to Wonderland
According to the much-touted version, on November 21, journalist Mustafa Nayem published a call on social media for everyone to come to Independence Square in central Kiev to protest Yanukovich and the ruling Party of Regions' refusal to sign the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement.
A lot of time and water has passed since then, but it was the Euromaidan that became the starting point for the war in Donbass and Russia's eventual special military operation on Ukrainian territory. It is impossible to understand what to do next without giving an answer to the question of what has happened over the past 9 years since Euromaidan began.
The first and most important “achievement” of Euromaidan is the formation of “anti-Russia.” After taking power in Kiev, the U.S. and the EU began to create the so called “anti-Russia,” a blatantly anti-Russian state, whose ideology is a war to destroy everything Russian.
The U.S. and the EU created “anti-Russia” out of Ukraine in many ways. This includes the training of armed units like the Azov Regiment (a terrorist organization banned in Russia), which was created according to the rules of a destructive sect, full of Nazi ideology and hatred of the Russians. This is pre-school and school training, when children from kindergarten are instilled with hatred of Russia and the Russian people.
It is also information policy, when TV channels, Internet and print media broadcast hate speech against Russia and the Russian people 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, hammering into the brain, as if it is a “historical enemy” for Ukraine. That and the creation of a new “Orthodox Church.” In 2019, Petro Poroshenko's administration formed the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) after receiving a tomos from Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. Although the OCU was formally established at Poroshenko's behest, U.S. diplomats helped with the recognition of the new denomination. For example, U.S. Ambassador to Greece Jeffrey Pyatt (the same one who oversaw the Euromaidan) openly campaigned in the media for “Poroshenko's church” and made it clear that he influenced the Hellenic Orthodox Church's decision to recognize the OCU.
To date, only 3-4 Orthodox churches around the world have recognized the OCU, but most importantly, it is under the patronage of the government. That is why OCU “activists” are quietly beating priests and seizing churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) all over Ukraine.
And what about the Russian leadership? The Russian officials and politicians keep saying that “Ukraine will fall apart on its own” and “Ukranians themselves will crawl begging for forgiveness.” Very convenient words to justify the policy of “doing nothing.” Although any adult, not necessarily a state manager or an official, is well aware that nothing is done “by itself” in this life. Not to mention the fact that most of the Russian media broadcast on a daily basis how Ukraine was under the external control of the United States and the EU, so the option “to collapse on their own” is a priori impossible.
Bloody war Instead of European “Paradise”
One of the consequences of Euromaidan, which has affected millions of people in Ukraine, Russia, and around the world, is the war in Donbass. When Maksim Galkin*, Zemfira, Andrei Makarevich, or Semyon Slepakov speak out against the special military operation, they are hypocritically silent about the fact that military action has actually been going on since 2014. It has simply been convenient to ignore the war until recently, pretending that everything is normal.
One can argue for a long time about who is right and who is wrong. But objectively, the chronology of events is as follows. On February 21, 2014, Yanukovich signed an “Agreement on resolving the political crisis” with the leaders of the parties that represented the political leadership of Euromaidan: Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Fatherland), Vitaliy Klitschko (UDAR), and Oleg Tyagnybok (Freedom). The agreement was guaranteed by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, and French Foreign Minister Eric Fournier. Actually, with the appearance among the signatories of a French “small fish” who is not responsible for anything a priori, it became clear from the start that this entire “agreement” is just a mere piece of paper. Apparently, this is why Vladimir Lukin, Russia's human rights ombudsman, refused to put his signature on the agreement. According to this document, Yanukovich ordered the withdrawal of the Berkut and Interior Ministry troops from Kiev. In response, Maidan activists announced a “peaceful offensive” and stormed the Presidential Administration, the Cabinet of Ministers, and the Verkhovna Rada. On February 22, Yanukovych left Kiev, and versions differed: the president of Ukraine moved either to Kharkov or to Crimea, but ended up in the Rostov Region.
The deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, led by Oleksandr Turchynov, took the opportunity to vote to remove Yanukovych from power, even though the Constitution of Ukraine has no such basis for terminating the powers of the head of state, and no one has proven that the president is out of the country.
The Maidanites took Kiev, but in response, Crimea and southeastern Ukraine went on the rampage. As for Crimea, as is known, a referendum was held there, as a result of which the republic became part of the Russian Federation. The Kiev authorities managed to put down the protests in Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, and Kharkov, but they bared their teeth suffered epic fail in Donetsk and Lugansk. On the night of April 11-12, 2014, an unknown armed detachment of 52 men crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border and seized the town of Slavyansk. It later became known that the commander of this detachment was named Igor Girkin, and that he himself used the pseudonym Igor Strelkov. In response, Acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov announced a so-called “anti-terrorist operation” against Donbass (although the Constitution of Ukraine expressly prohibits the use of the army against the population).
Then came the storming of Slovyansk and the withdrawal of Strelkov's detachment to Donetsk in July, heated battles in Donbass in August, and the first “Minsk agreements” in September 2014. A new attempt by official Kiev to launch an offensive against the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic ended with a harsh defeat of the AFU at Debaltseve and the conclusion of the second Minsk Agreements in February 2015.
After the battle for Debaltsevo, there were several more outbreaks of violent armed confrontation (the “industrial zone” in Avdeevka, the Svitlodarskaya Bulge), after which Kiev and the unrecognized republics of Donbass switched to positional battles until February 2022.
Of course, the armed conflict in Donbass led to tens of thousands of military and civilian casualties. Overall, between April 2014 and February 2022, not counting military on both sides, the UN estimates that 3,321 civilians, including 152 children, died in the Donbass. If you didn't live rich, you shouldn't have started.
Immediately after Oleksandr Turchynov, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and other “democrats” seized power in late February 2014, the National Bank of Ukraine halved the hryvnia-dollar exchange rate, from 8.17 in December 2013 to 16.36 hryvnia in February 2014. Given the high level of dollarization of the Ukrainian economy, millions of Ukrainians instantly became twice as poor. For example, while in 2013 the average salary was the equivalent of $403, after the Maidan it dropped to $208. As for inflation, it was 21.8 % in the year after the Euromaidan victory, according to the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine.
In terms of the economy, the coming to power of pro-American politicians under the cover of Euromaidan was a financial and economic catastrophe for Ukraine.
Overall, according to World Bank estimates, Ukraine's GDP changed over the period 2013-2021 as follows:
- 2013 - 190,5;
- 2014 - 133,5;
- 2015 - 91,03;
- 2016 - 93,36;
- 2017 - 112,09;
- 2018 - 130,89;
- 2019 - 153,88;
- 2020 - 156,62;
- 2021 - $200.09 billion.
NATO on Russia's Borders
From the point of view of geopolitics, the most important achievement of Euromaidan was the withdrawal of the NATO bloc to the borders of the Russian Federation. Of course, the Russian Federation has bordered with NATO before, since Russia shares borders with Estonia and Latvia. But for the first time, the length of Russia's common border with NATO was about 2,000 km.
Since 2015, the U.S. and the EU, through annual Ukraine-NATO cooperation programs, have implemented over seven years a large-scale program of, as Russian President Vladimir Putin put it, “military development” of Ukrainian territory, armed capabilities, and population.
Each program of Ukraine-NATO cooperation is dozens of pages and hundreds of specific items. In total, from 2015 to 2021, Presidents Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky approved seven Ukraine-NATO programs.
In short, NATO inspectors were given access to military units, facilities and arsenals throughout Ukraine. NATO reconnaissance planes were able to conduct reconnaissance flights along the border, that is, to take information from Russia's border territories as well. NATO has implemented its techniques at all levels, from platoon-level interaction protocols to the overall AFU command and control system. Employees of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the General Staff massively trained at NATO headquarters, and military advisers from NATO countries were assigned to the command bodies of the AFU.
Air traffic information exchange systems between Ukraine and NATO countries, logistics and standardization of the AFU, creation of an automated control system for aviation, air defense and all branches of the armed forces with NATO money – the list can go on and on. For example, the AFU massively uses the satellite Internet system Starlink, only about 1,300 terminals meet the needs of the Ukrainian army. But it is not enough to launch a satellite, it is necessary to synchronize it with army communication systems and teach tens of thousands of people how to use it. So Ukraine-NATO programs ensured implementation of this and thousands of similar tasks.
And what about the Kremlin? How did the Kremlin strategists react to the emergence of a military threat on their country's borders? And the Kremlin traded freely with Poroshenko, increasing the volume of trade year by year, and then in December 2019 persuaded new President Zelensky in Paris to prolong the contract for Gazprom's transit through Ukraine to Europe.
While the cunning Poroshenko engaged in sabotage, due to which the leadership and NATO spokesmen periodically rolled up scandals that broke through the media, under Zelensky the implementation of the program of “military development” of Ukraine went by leaps and bounds. And in the end, “military development” and the threat of an attack on the DPR and LPR were among the reasons Russia announced a special military operation in Ukraine.
It is clear that Poroshenko and others like him, who “leveled up” thanks to Euromaidan, are extolling the revolution of dignity in every possible way.
But there are plenty of critics of Euromaidan and its “gains,” except that most of them can openly express their opinions only when they are abroad.
On his accounts in social nets, Odessa political activist Vyacheslav Azarov draws attention first of all to the fact that the victory of Euromaidan was the beginning of the dismantling of the social gains of Ukrainians.
“As a result of the development of the Maidan movement and its power of neoliberal reformers, the working majority of Ukrainian society lost a decent standard of living, affordable medicine, the welfare office, and with them the leftist parties, whose policy is reduced to the protection of these gains. In terms of a rapid transformation of the country to suit the unlimited interests of local and Western capital, this was a winning campaign that achieved success. But it does not work even in the medium term, because the defenseless and therefore cheap labor force is ineffective, and devalued human capital cannot create an advanced economy,” said Vyacheslav Azarov.
In his Telegram channel, Ukrainian journalist Pavel Kukharkin, who left Ukraine, published a photo of a woman with a pot on her head, signing it “Congratulations to Ukraine on the day of causality.”
“Today, Ukraine will celebrate the day of dignity and freedom. Let me remind you, dignity began with this very photo in the Kiev city administration in 2013. These bums demanded soon to join the EU and European pensions. They got corpses and European problems,” said the oppositional Telegram channel KhtoSho.
* Maksim Galkin is included to the registry of individuals recognized as foreign agents by Ministry of Justice