DISINFO: US and EU organised a coup d'état in Kyiv creating an extremely militarised Nazi state
SUMMARY
Washington and Brussels have no right to throw accusations, stones, Javelins or Tomahawks at Russia, just because in 2014 it was the US and the EU that organised a coup d'état in Kyiv, created an extremely militarised Nazi state in Ukraine, and thus initiated the beginning of the fighting in Eastern Europe.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives painting the 2013-14 protests in Kyiv as a coup d'état orchestrated by NATO and US, blaming the West for the situation in Ukraine, and advancing disinformation trope of "Nazi Ukraine".
There was no coup d’état in Kyiv in 2014; this is a longstanding pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Ukraine's Euromaidan. The spontaneous onset of the Euromaidan protests was a reaction by numerous segments of the Ukrainian population to former president Viktor Yanukovych’s sudden departure from the promised Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013.
Ukraine is not a Nazi state. Nazi and Communist ideologies were banned by Ukrainian law in 2015. Far-right groups had a very limited presence during the protests and went on to obtain abysmal results in the 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections. During the 2019 election cycle, the far-right managed to sustain an even more tremendous failure; the highest-rated nationalist candidate, Ruslan Koshulynskyy, won 1.62% of the vote whereas Svoboda won 2.16% of the national vote, falling far short of the 5% minimum guaranteeing entry into parliament.
Furthermore, the myth of Nazi-ruled Ukraine has been a cornerstone of Russian disinformation about the country since the very beginning of the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests, when it was used to discredit the pro-European popular uprising in Kyiv and, subsequently, the broader pro-Western shift in Ukraine's foreign policy. Currently, this claim is part of an emerging pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign aimed at justifying the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On 24 February 2022 Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and continues to use unfounded allegations of Nazim and militarisation as justification. Read more about the most prominent pro-Kremlin disinformation myths about Ukraine.
Read here more about the EU response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.