Western media, starting with Reuters, have misrepresented the results of regional elections in Russia. Reuters contemplated a possible “beginning of the end” for Vladimir Putin, speculated on Putin’s downfall in the 2024 presidential elections and made an unwarranted comparison to Erdoğan’s election losses in Ankara and Istanbul. The media in Serbia have uncritically repeated these conclusions, misinforming the public about the real state of affairs in Russia. That is bad and dangerous for Serbia, because marginal figures are getting media coverage, instead of those who really influence Russia’s policy, including that towards the Balkans.
Those forces in the West that made the Maidan coup possible are still in important positions. Through the military industrial complex, party bureaucracies, NGOs, think tanks and the media, they continue to exert great influence on government decisions; so even with frequent cabinet changes, politics remains constant. In some capitals, such as Berlin, the Maidan supporters are still in power. These forces want to see Ukraine as a mono-ethnic country with EU and US affiliations and a nationalistic ideology influenced by Western Ukraine. In this scenario, the country should ideally be de-russified down to the last corner by bending and breaking.
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the belligerent West and its involvement in the war in Ukraine, stating that the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests resulted in an illegal coup; painting Ukraine as a failing state incapable of making its own policy choices and painting the West as the puppet-master of Ukrainian politics and Ukraine as an anti-Russian project. There was no coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014. The spontaneous onset of the Euromaidan protests was not provoked from outside. The demonstrations were an organic reaction by numerous parts of the Ukrainian population to former President Yanukovych’s sudden departure from the promised Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013. See the full debunk of this disinformation claim here. Ukraine is a sovereign and independent state with a democratically-elected president and parliament. Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are respected by almost the whole world. The EU and the US work closely with Ukraine. Their relations are not oriented against Russia.