The 2013 CIA Coup in Ukraine

Ukraine on Fire

Directed by Igor Lopotanok (2016)

Film Review

This documentary explores the 2013 US color revolution in Ukraine that led to the replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected government with a coalition of neo-Nazi groups covertly supported CIA-funded foundations. Late investigative journalist Robert Parry appears in the film to describe his investigations into the role of the US Embassy; CIA-funded foundations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); George Soros’s Renaissance Foundation and the Dutch Embassy.

The film begins by exploring Hitler’s invasion of Ukraine in 1941. Western Ukraine welcomed the Nazis, as this liberated them from Soviet occupation. The OSS (which became the CIA in 1947) protected Ukraine’s Nazis (who had participated in genocidal terrorism against neighboring Poles and Ukrainian Jews) to ensure they never stood trial for war crimes at Nuremberg.

In 1989, as the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, Ukrainian fascists the CIA had incubated formed the Ukrainian nationalist neo-Nazi group Svoboda. In 1994, three years after Ukraine declared independence, others would form the far right paramilitary organization Tryzub.

These and other US-funded groups were extremely instrumental in Ukraine’s first color revolution in 2005. The “Orange Revolution,” as it was known, displayed the same characteristic hallmarks as CIA-inspired “color revolutions” (eg coups) in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Georgia, Lebanon and elsewhere.

2013 witnessed a a similar color revolution after Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych rejected a pending EU association agreement.* When Yanukovych turned to Russia instead for financial support, the US-backed fascist groups began a campaign of “peaceful protests” in Kiev’s Maidan. As happens with many US-sponsored color revolutions, fascist and neo-Nazi instigators quickly escalated their nonviolent protests into violent attacks against police and government officials with rocks, bats, metal bars, Molotov cocktails and bulldozers.

With the help of three EU leaders, government officials negotiated a truce with opposition leaders, which the violent protestors refused to to honor. After being informed by Ukrainian intelligence that mercenaries had been hired to assassinate him, Yanukovich sought asylum in Russia. Violent protestors immediately occupied Yanukovich’s home and public office.

Although a parliamentary proposal to remove Yanukovich from the presidency lost by 68 votes, the US immediately recognized the head of the Ukrainian parliament as the new president.

A leaked phone conversation between Victoria Nuland, the lead US diplomat during the Ukraine crisis, confirms direct US involvement in the 2014 coup. During the call, Nuland is heard instructing coup leaders on US choices to form the new government.

This documentary also refutes the widespread MSM myth concerning a Russian invasion** of Crimea that never occurred. Concerned the US would organize a similar coup in the province of Crimea, the predominantly Russian-speaking residents of Crimea seized the Crimean Parliament in on February 27, 2014. On March 17, they organized a popular referendum in which 96.77% of voters (with 90% turnout) opted to leave Ukraine and request reunification with the Russian Federation.*

Russian-speaking residents of the western provinces of Luhansk and Donestsk also seized the government buildings in both provinces and declared the entire region as the People’s Republic of Donetsk. The military conflict between the Republic of Donetsk, which receives military and humanitarian support from Russia, is ongoing.

For me, the most interesting part of the film is Oliver Stone’s interview with Vladimir Putin.

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*Yanukovych worried that punitive IMF loans required to implement the agreement would destroy Ukraine’s economy.

**In 1954, Ukrainian native Nikita Khrushchev transferred governance of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. Following the Soviet collapse, Russian maintained (via a treaty with Ukraine) a military force of 2,000 troops in Crimea following Ukrainian independence, largely to protect the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.

Hidden History: The Interlocking Relationships Between Wall Street, the CIA and the So-Called Free Press

Mosaic of Facts: Inside the Information Web

RT (2014)

Film Review

In this 2014 documentary, free lance journalist Miguel Francis Santiago examines what he refers to as the “information war” between the US and Russia over recent events in Ukraine.

He begins by looking at evidence uncovered by late investigative journalist Robert Parry that the 2014 coup in western Ukraine was actually a US-sponsored “color revolution” to remove a democratically elected president (Viktor Yanukovych) and replace him with pro-EU/pro-NATO Petro Poroshenko.

Parry’s evidence pointed to open collaboration between former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the fascist and neo-Nazi Svoboda Party that (based on a 2012 BBC investigation) has a history of violently targeting Jews and ethnic Russians.

Santiago goes on to review a slew of widely promoted YouTube videos of both the Maidan uprising and the subsequent referendum in which 93% of Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine and request membership in the Russian Federation. In examining the origin of various pro-Kiev/anti-Russian videos, he discovers all were produced by people with links to the NED, USAID and/or the US State Department.

The film also includes interviews with retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, aid to former Secretary of State Colin Powell; Naomi Wolfe, former political advisor to Bill Clinton and Al Gore; geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser; and Peter Joseph, producer of the radical Zeitgeist film series.

Santiago uses these various sources to paint an extremely sophisticated picture of closely interlocking relationships between the US corporate plutocracy, US intelligence agencies and America’s so-called free press.

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*”Color revolutions” is the term used  to describe a series of failed “revolutions” in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa funded by the CIA, State Department and George Soros. The intent was to use popular uprisings to install more US-friendly regimes.

**National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a so-called non-governmental organization funded mainly by the CIA and State Department, used extensively to promote regime change via popular unrest.

***USAID is an agency of the State Department used extensively to promote regime change via popular unrest.

Unelected Regime Begins Killing Spree in Eastern Ukraine

 

With fanatical, irregular forces, armored vehicles, and aircraft including warplanes and helicopter gunships, the unelected government in Kiev has undertaken a war against their own people. That the US and EU are supporting this regime in terrorizing the Ukrainian people is a total reversal of the so called “responsibility to protect” they advocated in both Libya and Syria.

As Cartalucci points out at the end of his article: the west has already lost in Ukraine. With the people of Crimea choosing to rejoin Russia and with unrest spreading across eastern Ukraine, the notion of a “united” Ukraine shifting West is unlikely if not indefinitely impossible.