DISINFO: The coup in Ukraine in 2014 was a Western project

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative trying to undermine the sovereignty of Ukraine, while painting the 2013-14 protests in Kyiv as a coup d'état.

There was no coup, nor a western orchestrated protest in Ukraine in 2014. Pro-Kremlin media falsely portray the Euromaidan revolution as a coup d’état. In fact, the popular demonstrations that began in Kyiv in November of 2013 and brought hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to the streets were protesting against a political decision of Viktor Yanukovych’s government, which at the last minute withdrew from a long-negotiated political association and free trade pact with the EU, choosing instead to accept a $15 billion economic bailout to Russia.

Russia is the party responsible for the deterioration of Ukrainian-Russian relations. Since 2014, Russia has waged large-scale armed aggression against Ukraine and is also responsible for the outbreak of the conflict in 2014, after having illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula and engineered the creation of rebel militias in Donetsk, Luhansk and other places, with its army actively participating in military clashes.

Ukraine closely cooperates with the United States, the EU and NATO, but this does not mean that the US, or what pro-Kremlin media usually call “the collective West”, is pushing Kyiv into direct confrontation against Moscow. Ukraine’s Western partners are helping Ukraine stop the bloodshed in Donbas and alleviate the suffering of civilians in the war zone.

See similar cases in our database: Kyiv is an anti-Russian puppet in the geopolitical games of the US and NATO; Since the coup, Ukraine has turned into a Western project; Ukraine is a Western project directed against Russia; Europe has always considered Ukraine an anti-Russian project.