DISINFO: The civil war in Ukraine started because of NATO
SUMMARY
The civil war in Ukraine started precisely because of NATO. [...] The Anglo-Saxons have staged a coup d'état in Ukraine, put their puppets in power and turned Ukraine itself into an "anti-Russia" project that poses a real threat on its borders. [...] When I hear from our puppet government that Ukraine is NATO's eastern front, I realise that these puppets are not serving Ukraine, but NATO's interests.
RESPONSE
Two interconnected recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives are used in this piece. One about the war in Ukraine, claiming that Russia is not part of the conflict in Donbas, and that NATO is responsible for it, i.e. that Russia has nothing to do with the war in eastern Ukraine and presenting the conflict as a “civil war”, started by NATO. The other is about an alleged anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine in 2014; this is a longstanding pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Ukraine's Euromaidan protests.
The spontaneous onset of the Euromaidan protests 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. See the full debunk: The Western-backed coup in Ukraine has torn the country asunder.
As for Russia's ‘role within the war in Ukraine, the European Union stated in July 2014 that "arms and fighters continue flowing into Ukraine from the Russian Federation". At the NATO Summit in Wales in September 2014, NATO leaders condemned in the strongest terms Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine and demanded Russia to stop and withdraw its forces from Ukraine and from the country’s border. NATO leaders also demanded Russia comply with international law and its international obligations and responsibilities; refrain from aggressive actions against Ukraine; halt the flow of weapons, equipment, people and money across the border to the separatists; and stop fomenting tension along and across the Ukrainian border.
In 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted Russia's military presence in Ukraine.
See similar disinformation cases alleging that in 2014 coup Kyiv government carried out a war against its own people, Donbas rebelled because Russians in Ukraine were subjected to ethnocide, that after Euromaidan Ukraine lost its sovereignty and is falling apart, that the Euromaidan coup led to civil war in Donbas, or that Ukraine committed a crime by attacking its citizens in Donbas in 2014.