Russians, especially President Putin, view political developments beyond their borders outside the rubric of great power politics. Anything significant occurring in a post-Soviet satellite country, like Ukraine, a vassal state, must be connected to outside maneuverings. The default narrative for most, if not all, coups is “The CIA is behind it!”. Naturally, the Kyiv Maidan protests were viewed as a CIA plot, which led to what some call “Obama’s coup”. Putin’s propaganda power flows beyond Fox News’s viewership into independent and centrist camps armed with the cynicism to see ubiquitous corruption in all politicians along with omnipresent CIA plots.
The Maidan Revolution or Revolution of Dignity originated with Ukraine’s President Yanukovich, a Putin puppet, who on 11/21/2013 abandoned a trade and aid agreement with the EU in exchange for a $15 billion loan from Russia. This servitude to Putin motivated hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to protest. Of their own free will, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovich whereupon he fled into Russia. When Putin saw the protests in Kyiv’s Maidan he didn’t see a homegrown movement against corruption and in favor of European integration. He saw a CIA plot (in his imagination). Moscow’s claims of pending “genocide” at the hands of “fascists” precipitated an annexation of the Crimean peninsula and instigation of a bloody war in the country’s eastern Donbass region. Putin accused the west of staging a “coup” against Yanukovich. The Kremlin narrative of the “coup” included claims of “genocide” at the hands of “fascists”, and Russia’s anti-coup narrative stated the CIA, in cahoots with Ukrainian neo-Nazis, Western intelligence agents fronting as pro-democracy activists, along with EU bureaucrats, all combined to mastermind a violent takeover. Consider the fact that Ukraine elected a Jewish Prime Minister, Volodymyr B. Groysman on April 14, 2016, 3 years before Jewish President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was elected. But what about those Neo-Nazis!
Putin is determined to prove that a liberal democracy will lead to chaos, thus expending much blood and treasure to ensure post-Maidan Ukraine becomes a failed state. On 11/21/13 Mustafa Nayyem (according to author James Kirchik cited below) incited via Facebook the Maidan Revolution upon the President Yanuvovich’s rejection of an EU trade and aid treaty and acceptance of a $15 billion loan from Russia. Hundreds of thousands gathered at the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the central square of Kyiv, capital city of Ukraine, which grew into the largest pro-European rally in history – Euromaidan. In Feb. 2014 nearly 100 demonstrators were killed by government forces. A treaty was signed transferring the power of the Ukraine presidency to the parliament and withdrawal of security forces from downtown Kyiv.
As Yanukovich fled Ukraine, Putin ordered Russian forces to begin returning Crimea to Russia. Five days later “little green men” seized government buildings and raised Russian flags. An illegally installed Russian puppet government headed by a local crime boss announced a referendum to decide Crimea’s future status. This sham referendum had 97% of Crimeans voting for its annexation to Russia. No international body recognizes the so-called referendum. On March 27th, 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in which it stated that the referendum in Crimea was not valid and could not serve as a basis for any change in the status of the peninsula. This was not enough to satisfy Vladimir Putin who felt compelled to topple the new Ukrainian government in Kyiv. Russian propaganda had exposes of Western plans to destroy Russia. Russia claimed that the new “fascist” government in Ukraine was planning a genocide of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. A crooked mirror of Maidan developed in East Ukraine as paranoid propaganda from Moscow triggered a revival of Soviet-era fears about the West. Rallying cries came, inciting Russian speakers to take up arms against their Western oppressors. Russia helped spawn ragtag separatist militias, arming and funding them. They seized government buildings and formed People’s Republics in Donetsk and Lugansk, instigating a bloody war in the Donbass region of Ukraine.
When the Ukrainian military asserted itself, the Kremlin amped up its involvement. Even the downing of a Malaysian Airlines jet over Ukraine by a Russian-supplied anti-aircraft missile did not temper Russian military intervention. Western indecisiveness in the wake of the crash emboldened Putin to further militarize the Ukraine, transforming the stealth invasion into a conventional war. The Gerasimov Doctrine has been used to render Ukraine chaotic, hurl it into civil war. Waves of disinformation avert accurate media coverage in the EU and USA. RT is in alignment with this with this propagandistic Ukrainian campaign, including that the CIA shot down the Malaysian jet.
Kremlin propagandist Valery Gerasimov wrote an article in 2013, one year before before the Crimea operation and Donbass war. He promoted the shrewd use of subterfuge and disinformation that Moscow would soon deploy to expert effect. “A perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war.” Such disastrous chaos has indeed come to fruition. Russia’s military intervention, dubbed by analysts as “hybrid, non-linear, and special”, has employed “humanitarian aid convoys” containing weapons, “local self-defense units” led by Russian special forces, and other euphemistic implements designed to confuse and distract adversaries while providing plausible deniability that anything resembling a war is taking place. These military/propaganda ops are accompanied by a wave of disinformation intended to divide and subvert the West.
Unlike the Cold War Soviet Era, the new Russia does not seek high approval in other nations, preferring to be feared over being loved. Russia’s disinformation operations have the 4 D’s: (1) Dismiss the critic; (2) Distort the facts; (3) Distract from the main issue; (4) Dismay the audience. When you create a moral quagmire in which everyone is wrong, therefore wrong actions become normal. Today Russia aims to sow confusion and defeatism in the West by poking holes in its narratives and ridiculing and upending the very notion of objective truth – a strategy acclaimed historian and author Timothy Snyder calls “applied postmodernism”.
The bulk of the information here comes from The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age by James Kirchik published in 2017.
Other sources:
Revolution of Dignity – Wikipedia
Ukrainians Elect Country’s First Jewish Prime Minister : NPR
Timothy Snyder warned us fascism was coming — now he says we can survive it | Salon.com