Ukraine from Euromaidan to Civil War

      Ukraine From Euromaidan to Internationalized Civil War

   This article is an outgrowth of my “Fascism in Ukraine” series which deals with the origins and history of fascism in Ukraine. Since so much happened in Ukraine fall 2013 through spring 2015 and since the role of “Russian separatists” was as important as Ukrainian fascism to this history I decided that the Euromaidan coup and internationalized civil war that followed deserved it’s own article. In the Fall of 2013 a “color revolution” began in Kiev that would culminate in a bloody false flag sniper massacre wrongly blamed in the western press on Yanukovych. Ukrainian fascists in the form of Right Sector and the Svobada Party although a minority of the protestors would play the decisive role as they were trained and motivated to engage in violent clashes with police. It was not peaceful protestors that forced Yanukovych to flee the country but fascist paramilitary groups. The Ukrainian Rada (Parliament) then illegally voted to depose Yanukovych often under threat of these same fascist paramilitaries who forcibly kidnapped some of the deputies and brought them to vote and intimidated others into voting to depose Yanukovych. 

   The first act of the new government was to repeal Yanukovych’s language law of 2012 which allowed regions to grant “minority” language rights to languages like Russian allowing them to be given official status. This along with the role of the Ukrainian fascists in the Maidan revolution provoked a full scale rebellion in the east of Ukraine. The situation was further enflamed when Putin decided to reunify Crimea and Russia using covert or hybrid warfare. This sparked hope in Eastern Ukraine and parts of Southern Ukraine that Russia would come to the aid of their rebellion. Putin’s Crimean gambit provoked panic in the new interim Ukrainian government about further loss of territory. Instead of negotiating an end to the crisis they decided to crush the people protesting in the east although they were merely using the same tactics as the maidan protestors. In Kharkov and Odessa the protests were crushed but in Donetsk and Lugansk the protestors seized arms depots and began forming militias. Originally these “pro-Russian: militias were intended mostly to resist fascist paramilitary groups which the government sent to crush the anti-maidan protests. The conflict further escalated when ex-FSB Colonel Igor Strelkov (real name Igor Girkin) arrived with 52  volunteers mostly Ukrainians many who had taken part in the Crimean operation. They seized Ukrainian security service buildings in Slavyansk. It appeared that the “little green men” or “polite people” as the Russian special forces masquerading as Crimean Self Defense forces were dubbed had arrived in the Donbas stoking hopes among the rebels and fears in the new Ukrainian government. But also of course opportunities for them in the PR war as the Donbass uprising which had begun during the Maidan revolution and escalated after the coup could now be dismissed as a Russian special operation. This was the version picked up by the western press eager to magnify the Russian threat and by western governments who could now justify NATO expansion as necessary to contain a revanchist expansionist Russia. 

   This article will attempt to untangle the exact nature and timetable of Russian involvement in the war. The day after Strelkov’s arrival in Slavyansk there was a minor skirmish on April 13. Ukraine then declared full scale war on the Donbass calling it an Anti-terrorist Operation or ATO. Every man woman and child including the elderly were now labeled by the Ukrainian government as potential terrorists and completely expendable. America and the west which had urged Yanukovych to use restraint against fascist paramilitaries attempting to overthrow him now gave the Ukrainian government encouragement to wage war on it’s own people pretending they were resisting a full scale Russian invasion. A little more then 2 weeks after the ATO was declared Ukraines security services teamed up with Right Sector and what would become the Azov Battalion to massacre 42 protestors in Odessa on May 2 2014 burning them alive or beating them to death if they tried to escape. The police then arrived to arrest the survivors instead of the perpetrators. Ukrainian liberals and Ukrainian fascists rejoiced. 

   In Eastern Ukraine and in Russia many decided to volunteer to fight this new government which seemed hellbent on massacring the people of the Donbass next. In Slavyansk the rebels continued to battle both the AFU (Ukrainian armed forces) and the fascist paramilitaries who had now been recruited by Ukrainian’s ministry of internal affairs as volunteer battalions as many in the AFU were deserting and joining the rebels at that time. The Ukrainian government forces were unable to take the town but they did manage to take the heights and began bombarding the civilian population with their artillery. Putin who had promised to defend the Russian speakers did nothing. In July Strelkov ordered his forces to retreat from Slavyansk (which had become a symbol of resistance for the rebels and Russian nationalists) this was to avoid encirclement but may have been meant to force Putin’s hand as he also ordered the rebels to retreat from areas that were still defensible. By August Strelkov had resigned as head of the military probably as a condition for Russian intervention as Putin hated having his hand forced. In August the AFU were on the verge of seizing the border and had encircled the rebels at Ilovaisk. This was when the rebels and the Russian military itself launched a counter-offensive encircling and crushing the AFU. Ukraine was forced to sign the Minsk 1 peace deal but the war continued. Fighting continued for Donetsk airport which the AFU controlled and at the Debaltseve Salient that cut off Donetsk from Lugansk. For a second time Russia intervened militarily at Debaltseve and Ukraine was forced to sign the Minsk II protocols while the battle was still ongoing. 

   Ironically Minsk II would have allowed Ukraine to regain the separatist republics in exchange for granting them autonomy and Russian language rights. Yet Ukraine refused to implement them because they were strongly opposed by the Ukrainian fascists who were constantly threatening to overthrow the government if they were implemented. The other reason was that the Ukrainians did not want to return to the Ukraine of 2013 which had been evenly divided between “pro-Russian” and pro-western with the “pro-Russian” east usually wining out unless the west was willing to back them as during the Orange revolution of 2004 and the Maidan revolution of 2014. The war gave them the excuse to disenfranchise east Ukrainians who were denied the vote both in Separatist controlled territories and in government occupied territories. The war never truly ended but the fighting was low intensity enough that the Ukraine war was largely ignored from 2015-2020 until 2021 when Zelensky was promising to take back the Donbass while Russia was amassing troops on it’s border either to pressure Ukraine or in preparation for the coming invasion. In February 2022 Russia finally recognized the Two Donbass Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk and it was clear war was imminent. NATO refused to publicly state that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO while privately promising Ukraine would never be allowed to join NATO. The result was a bungled Russian invasion and a massive war that continues to this day.

   My series on fascism in Ukraine traces the origins of Ukrainian nationalism in the 19th century, it’s transformation into a fascist movement following World War 1, this began as the UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization) founded by Yevhen Konavalets which spied for Germany and engaged in violent attacks in what was then Poland in 1929 the UVO created the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) as a mass political party attempting to use terror, propaganda, and massive civil disobedience to “liberate” Galicia and Volhynia from Poland. It’s head in Ukraine was the young Stepan Bandera who was arrested just before the assassination of Poland’s interior minister Pieracki was carried out on his order, the trial made Bandera an icon among Ukrainian nationalists, When Germany invaded Poland at the start of World War 2 Bandera escaped Polish prison and tried to gain control of the OUN which now split into an OUN-M under Andrei Melnyk and an OUN-B under Bandera. (Konavalets had been assassinated by a Soviet agent in 1938) Both the OUN-B and the OUN-M would collaborate with the Nazis during World War 2 the OUN-B played a key role in the Holocaust serving as auxiliary police who rounded up guarded and sometimes executed the jews, many former auxiliary police went on to join the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) and went on to murder 100,000 Poles in an effort to ethnically cleanse West  Ukraine. The OUN-M were major backers of the creation of the Waffen SS Galicia division which massacred civilians in Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and Slovakia. 

   After the war the OUN-B and OUN-M went to work for the western intelligence agencies  during the Cold War. During the Cold War the west used the OUN-UPA to wage a proxy war with the Soviet Union in western Ukraine that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of deportations. The OUN-B split at the start of the cold war with it’s political front the UHVR (Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council) headed by Mykola Lebed the former head of OUN-SB their intelligence service responsible for killing suspected traitors and their families. The UHVR went to work for the CIA Lebed was smuggled illegally into the U.S. and ran the CIA front Prolog Research Corporation. MI6 continued to back the OUN-B until the early 1950’s. After that the OUN-B’s main backers were the BND West German Intelligence run by ex-nazi Reinhard Gehlen. 

    At the end of the cold war when Gorbachev’s reforms loosened political control Ukrainian nationalism would play an important role in destabilizing and dismantling the Soviet Union. Ukraine became for the first time a unified independent nation state. During the cold war the U.S. and U.K. had helped tens of thousands of Ukrainian fascists escape to the west and resettled them around the globe. In exile members of the OUN-B had created a personality cult around the would be fascist dictator of Ukraine Stepan Bandera who was assassinated back in 1959 by a soviet agent. They had also created a powerful lobby and gained control over the field of Ukrainian studies. By the 1980’s the Reagan administration gave this cryptofascist Ukrainian diaspora control over RFE-RL’s (which began as a CIA front) Ukraine operations where they were able to promote the OUN-UPA as heroic freedom fighters to an Ukrainian audience that was cynically critical of Soviet propaganda but naively gullible about western propaganda a phenomenon common in the late soviet union.

   With Ukraine newly independent this diaspora of exiles were given an unprecedented opportunity to reshape Ukraine’s national myth. In west Ukraine the cult of Bandera had already revived and new fascists groups had been created to carry on the legacy of the OUN-B. Each party also maintained a youth wing and a paramilitary wings. Often these would later split off and the paramilitary wings would create new political parties and youth groups. For example Slava Stetsko the widow of Yaroslav Stetsko who was Bandera’s successor as head of the OUN-B and also ran the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations an umbrella group of fascist emigres that was in turn part of the much larger umbrella group the World Anti-Communist League uniting gladio terrorists, latin American death squads, right wing Asian dictators, and mainstream western politicians like John McCain. After Yaroslav Stetsko died his widow Slava Stetsko took over and moved back to Ukraine. There she set up the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN) as a front group. She was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament or Rada and was known as the mother of the Rada until she died. The paramilitary branch of KUN was Stepan Bandera’s Trident co-founded by future Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh. Already by the 1990’s these fascist groups had their own private armies and in fact fought Russians or their allies in various proxy wars in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and Moldova. I covered the revival of Ukrainian fascism in the late Soviet Union up through 2010 in parts 4 and 5 of my “Fascism in Ukraine” series.

   In the first half of the 20th century Ukraine had been a key battleground, in World War 1, The Russian-Civil War, The Polish Soviet War, World War 2 and from 1945-1953 during the “Cold War” which I prefer to call World War 3. Now Ukraine was seemingly fated to repeat this tragic history in the era I like to call World War 4 the era of American Hyperpower where the American empire seeks to dominate the globe under a variety of pretexts from the war on drugs, to the global war on terror, to “Humanitarian Interventions”, “color revolutions” leading to the “return of great power competition” aka cold war 2.0. The U.S. strategy was to prevent any “regional powers” from emerging that could challenge it’s global dominance. Yet while the U.S. was busy laying waste to the middle east Russia under Putin was re-emerging from the chaos and misery of the 1990’s, and China was on a course to surpass the U.S. as the most important global economic power. 

   In the months prior to the start of the “Maidan Revolution” or more accurately Maidan Fascist coup Russia had been meddling in the middle east on behalf of Syria a country it would later betray and help destroy in the fall of 2024. This is not the place to go into it but the destruction of the Syrian Arab republic replaced by a failed state headed by al-Jolani a for,er deputy commander of ISIS and leader al Nusra (al Qaeda’s Syrian branch later rebranded HTS) who has spent the year terrorizing minorities with kidnappings, rapes and massacres. These horrifying events along with the horrific ongoing genocide in Gaza while  Russia and China continue to maintain close ties with Israel has exposed major flaws in the hope that this new multipolar world will be better then the old Unipolar one. China is Israel’s largest trading partner. Not only did Russia fail to intervene to stop the HTS takeover, according to independent journalists like Vanessa Beeley and Laith Marouf the Russians actively sabotaged SAA communications and ordered them to retreat and may have basically kidnapped Assad to prevent any resistance. Russia’s entire role in Syria must be reassessed. Was Russia’s intervention part of a cynical long term strategy from the start or did Putin merely betray Syria because he didn’t want a distraction from his full scale war in Ukraine and was sick of Assad’s stubborn independence? Of course Russia’s great final betrayal of Syria was preceded by many smaller betrayals like allowing Israel to bomb the country at will, or failing to help Syria evade U.S. sanctions. The question will be debated for decades. However for the purposes of this article it is simpler to adopt the second option and accept things as they appeared on the surface that Russia intervened to protect Syria from a massive planned U.S. airstrike after Syria was blamed for a false flag chemical attack carried out by the Syrian rebels on August 21, 2013. Russia moved it’s navy to Syria’s coast to deter the attack while offering a face saving diplomatic offramp with Syria agreeing to destroy it’s chemical weapons stockpiles in hopes of avoiding blame for future false flag terrorist attacks. This also accomplished a long term Israeli goal of disarming Syria’s chemical weapons  deterrent to a potential Israeli nuclear, chemical or biological warfare attack. Nonetheless this de-escalation seemed to infuriate elements of the Obama administration who had looked forward to the U.S. entering the Syria war directly and these neo-cons launched a color revolution in Ukraine in revenge. This lead to a civil war and a proxy war with Russia over the Donbass. Of course plans for a Color Revolution in Ukraine were already in motion from the moment Yanukovych was re-elected back in 2010 but it was likely originally planned to take place during the Ukrainian presidential elections of 2015 and was moved up. The Syria motive is speculation on my part not discussed in my sources but the timing is revealing. The two wars are always linked in my mind as Russia intervened in Syria a few months after the fighting died down in Ukraine.

   A couple months before the Maidan Revolution even began (which was supposedly spontaneously sparked by Yanukovych’s rejection of the planned EU association Agreement) the President of the NED Carl Gershman bragged about US plans to launch a color revolution to remove Ukraine from Russia’s orbit. He then implied that Putin might be next to go. He wrote an Op-ed for the Washington Post titled “Former Soviet States stand up to Russia will the U.S.?” calling “Ukraine the biggest prize” and claiming “Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but in Russia itself”. Two years earlier there had been a failed color revolution in Russia itself when Putin decided to return to the Presidency. It was during the Arab Spring that the U.S. developed a much more aggressive and violent version of it’s color revolution tactics and incorporated gladio style false flag terror attacks as key elements. In Libya and Syria snipers fired on both protestors and police and the color revolutions evolved into full blown internationalized  civil wars. In the case of Libya NATO then bombed the rebels into power turning the most prosperous nation in Africa into a failed state subject to an endless civil war. The use of snipers did have earlier precedents the failed coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002 also involved false flag sniper attacks. Even earlier in Romania during the overthrow of the Warsaw pact manipulated massacres provided a pretext for the summary execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and the seizing of power by the opposition who were later convicted of orchestrating the whole thing. I learned of this incident thanks to Ivan Katchanovski’s masterful dissection of the Maidan Massacre “The Madian Massacre in Ukraine” and also that the events in Romania provided direct inspiration for the Maidan Massacre according to former Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk.

   But let’s finish setting the stage for the 2014 Ukraine coup and the war that followed. According to geo-political strategist and Russia hawk Zbigniew Brzezinski Ukraine represented a key piece on “the Grand Chessboard” and without it Russia could never again become a great power. At the end of the Cold War the U.S. and it’s allies had promised Gorbachev that if he allowed East and West Germany to reunify, NATO would never expand eastward. Gorbachev then went on to give up Soviet control over eastern Europe by allowing the Warsaw pact to dissolve. The U.S. showed it’s appreciation by helping Yeltsin to disband the Soviet Union and offered economic guidance that plunged Russia into economic and societal chaos. It then began to rapidly expand NATO and the EU. It ended up discrediting it’s pro-western puppet Yeltsin and his pro western advisers. This lead to the rise of Putin who began as also pro-western but with ambitions to restore Russia’s status in the world. He crushed the power of the Russian oligarchs and raised the standard of living in Russia restoring order. NATO expansion continued with the former Soviet republics in the Baltic Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joining in 2004 the same year as the U.S. backed the Orange Revolution put the pro-western Yushchenko in powet. As NATO and the EU expanded east they absorbed many countries that were hostile to Russia further escalating tensions. These included the aforementioned Baltic countries who are always in the headlines these days trying to drum up a NATO-Russia war. Another key player was Poland their foreign minister Radislaw Sikorski husband of anti-Russian public intellectual Anne Applebaum was responsible for designing an eastern partnership program for the EU that contained a NATO trojan horse in that countries that wanted EU membership would have to closely coordinate their security strategy with NATO. Sikorski’s partner in designing this scheme was Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt. This is why Ukraine has managed to become a defacto NATO member without actually joining either NATO or the EU which have both refused to offer Ukraine membership despite Ukraine undergoing harsh neoliberal austerity programs that decimated it’s economy on behalf of the EU or provoking a war with Russia in it’s quest to join NATO. 

   In 2008 NATO opened the door to membership to Georgia and Ukraine. This was a red line for Russia who made it clear it was willing to wage war to prevent either country from joining. If NATO were to station nuclear missiles in Ukraine they could strike Russia in minutes. Georgia’s megalomaniacal President Mikhail Saakashvili (who’d been installed in a 2003 color revolution that would serve as a blueprint for Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution) launched a surprise attack on South Ossetia later that year in 2008 after promising a ceasefire killing Russian peacekeepers and many south Ossetian civilians. Russia invaded Georgia and NATO refused to come to Georgia’s aid and Georgian forces were crushed. Saakashvili would eventually be voted out of office and become a wanted criminal in Georgia for coup plots, and murder of opposition journalists. He ended up being appointed  Governor of Odessa region in Ukraine in 2015 but is currently in prison in Georgia. To this day many academics and journalists in the west refuse to give an accurate account of the Georgia war claiming Russia somehow tricked Saakashvili into attacking or claiming Saakashvili attacked to thwart the Russian invasion which he actually provoked. A pattern that would repeat in the coverage of events in Ukraine. Saakashvili helped recruit Georgian snipers for the Maidan Massacre and one of his aides was mysteriously murdered during the Maidan Revolution 

   Back in 2013 Ukraine was a deeply divided country along political linguistic, and ethnic lines. The simple version is of a more pro-Russian east that tends to remember the Soviet Union fondly and relied on Russia as a market for it’s industry, people there speak Russian and often had a dual identity of both Russians and Ukrainians. There is also a religious division in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church between those loyal to the Moscow Patriarch and those loyal to Kiev. Historically many in Ukraine  were known to adopt whichever identity was advantageous at the moment. For example during the internationalized civil war the people of the DPR and LPR might emphasize their Russianess in appeals for help from Russia one moment and emphasize their Ukrianianess when trying to appeal to Ukraine to stop the war the next.  

   Central and Eastern Ukraine had been part of the Russian empire for centuries. During the Russian revolution it had briefly declared independence as the UNR (Ukrainian peoples Republic), it became a german puppet state (The Hetmanate), and after Germany’s defeat  declared independence again as the UNR ruled by the “Directory” of Symon Petliura whose forces slaughtered around 30,000 jews. Future OUN founder Konavalets was a high ranking officer under Petliura. However the UNR failed to get enough popular support as Ukrainian nationalism only appealed to the educated classes and the majority of Ukrainians were illiterate peasants back then who ended up supporting the Soviets for economic reasons. Central and Eastern Ukraine thus became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic part of the Soviet Union. Many spoke in a dialect common in Southern Russia that was a mix of Russian and Ukrainian. Today Ukrainian fascists dream of absorbing parts of Western and Southern Russia where this dialect is spoken into a greater Ukraine.

   Then their was western Ukraine which had been part of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and then the Austro Hungarian empire and then after World War 1 part of Poland after losing the Polish-Ukrainian war when there had briefly been a West Ukrainian peoples republic. OUN founder Konavalets had fought on the side of the Austro-Hungarian empire as leader of the Ukrainian sharp shooters during World War 1 but was captured and held as a POW in central Ukraine which is how he ended up fighting for the UNR instead of the ZUNR (West Ukrainian People’s Republic) West Ukraine is the heartland of radical Ukrainian nationalism where the OUN was created to liberate Ukraine from Poland. Lviv is the capital of Bandera worship known as Bandera City where a massive statue of Bandera stands as various roads named after Ukrainian fascists converge on the statue.  The west Ukrainians traditionally hate Russia and are obsessed with forcing Ukrainians to speak Ukrainian. According to some studies 80% of Ukrainians preferred to speak Russian but only 50% of them would admit that they preferred speaking Russian. In West Ukraine they actually speak Ukrainian although originally west Ukrainian was a completely different version of Ukrainian that was practically a Polish dialect while the Ukrainian spoken in Central Ukraine was practically a Russian dialect. The Ukrainian language is constantly being altered by nationalists to remove Russian words. Likewise since the start of the civil war and even more so since the Russian invasion many Ukrainians in Central and Eastern Ukraine have dropped their dual Russian identity. 

   Of course this east west version is an oversimplification. West Ukraine used to be home to a huge Pro-Russian movement that was crushed during World War 1 with the pro-russians sent to concentration camps. Two of the key ideologues of Ukrainian fascism were from Eastern Ukraine Mikhnovski who came up with the slogan “Ukraine for Ukrainians” and Dmytro Dontsov the thinker who inspired a generation of Ukrainian fascists including Bandera  was from Southeastern Ukraine but moved to what would later be western Ukraine. The Azov movement is based in Eastern Ukraine and originated out of Patriot of Ukraine in Kharkov. Still broadly speaking the farther west you go in Ukraine the more pro-western, pro-fascist, and Pro-Euromaidan people were while further east and south people were more likely to be pro-Russian, nostalgic for the soviet era, and opposed to Euromaidan. Yet Kuchma and Yanukovych failed to come up with a coherent competing national narrative to win the hearts and minds of Ukrainians. Increasingly central Ukraine and later even eastern Ukraine would adopt the west Ukrainian vision of Ukrainian nationalism. Also Kuchma and Yanukovych were too greedy and the oligarchs who backed Yanukovych like Dmitry Firtash and Renat Akhmetov would decide to switch sides prior to Euromaidan and join up with the opposition.

   Check out part 5 of my fascism in Ukraine series for biographies of some of the key political players during the Orange Revolution some of whom will make their return for the following events. First of course there is President Viktor Yanukovych back in his youth in Soviet times Yanukovych was convicted of Robbery and assault and sent to prison twice. Yet thanks to the patronage of a cosmonaut he became a successful manager of various state enterprises. After independence he gained the patronage of a powerful oligarch and began his political rise to power under President Kuchma (Ukraine’s second President) Kuchma was a notoriously successful and corrupt political manipulator. He was installed by the west with the help of Soros to carry out neo-liberal reforms. He won by gaining  the support of the Russian speaking east against his predecessor the “National Communist” Leonid Kravchuk who supported radical nationalism and forced Ukrainization but was slow to get rid of the soviet era red directors. By 2000 the west had turned on Kuchma and for 3 years there was a low intensity destabilization campaign to overthrow him. These same groups of protestors would be mobilized to prevent his successor Prime Minister Yanukovych who had co-founded the Party of Regions (with it’s power base in Donetsk) from stealing the 2004 election the infamous 2004 Orange Revolution which would begin on the exact same date as the 2014 Euromaidan protest November 21. Actually both sides engaged in voter fraud in 2004 and many of the stories of how Yanukovych stole the vote were later discredited.  Nonetheless the biased NED funded exit pollsters who would join the efforts to overthrow him convinced the NED trained court to overturn the election results and the opposition candidate Yushchenko became president instead after an illegal 3rd round of voting. 

   Yet Yanukovych was able to revive his political career becoming Prime minister yet again and then being elected president in 2010. Yushchenko only got 5% of the vote in the 1st round of the 2010 elections. Yanukovych’s main opponent was Yulia Tymoshenko the other co-leader of the Orange Revolution a corrupt gas princess who quickly fell out with Yushchenko. Yanukovych angered the west by imprisoning the undeniably corrupt Yulia Tymoshenko for corruption since he was also undeniably corrupt it was seen as selective prosecution. Selective prosecution for corruption is a common tool of the American empire and a textbook example of lawfare but so of course is selective outrage.  Yulia Tymoshenko was in prison during Euromaidan but Victoria Nuland’s favorite candidate Arseniy Yatsenyuk was a member of her Fatherland party. So was Andriy Parubiy the architect of the Maidan massacre and cofounder of the neo-nazi SNPU (Social-National Party of Ukraine a reference to National Socialism better known as Nazism) SNPU was rebranded Svoboda (Freedom) in 2004 and Parubiy left in disgust and ran on the mainstream Fatherland party ticket. Yulia Tymoshenko has since faded from the limelight but was infamous in 2014 for saying she wanted to shoot Putin in the head with a machine gun and also saying she wanted to nuke the Donbass. These statements went viral on Ukrainian and Russian social media adding fuel to the fire of the brewing civil war. She’s also remembered for her theatrical appearances in a wheelchair with an oxygen mask in an attempt to get released from prison for health reasons. She lost Ukraine’s first post coup presidential elections in May  2014 to the more moderate seeming Petro Poroshenko “the chocolate king” who also owned TV stations that played a major role in both the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan revolution. Poroshenko promised a peaceful settlement of the civil war but would instead majorly escalate the war. By 2019 this former Party of Regions co-founder was firmly in the radical nationalist camp.

    However in fall 2013 few were talking about Poroshenko instead the main opposition leaders were Vitaly Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and Oleg Tyhanybok. Klitschko gained fame as a boxer then parlayed that into a political career his political party was called UDAR. He had the highest approval ratings of the three with 28.7% approval. However Victoria Nuland decided he was too soft and inexperienced instead of rising to power he had to content himself with being mayor of Kiev. Victoria Nuland is married to Robert Kagan whose family are 2nd generation neo-conservatives Robert Kagan did “public diplomacy” (propaganda)for the Reagan administration justifying the horrific dirty wars in Central America. Victoria Nuland was a former National Security Adviser to vice President Dick Cheney and former U.S. ambassador to NATO who convinced Bush to ignore Putin’s warnings on inviting Ukraine to join NATO. At the time of the Maidan coup Nuland was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs.  Nuland is infamous for leaked phone call to Geoffrey Pyatt where she said “Fuck the EU” and talked about sidelining Klitschko. The call also revealed the involvement of Vice President Joe Biden who would basically run post Maidan Ukraine The leaked call has been widely misinterpreted to be a discussion of the post coup government actually they were discussing who Yanukovych should appoint as the next prime minister to placate the opposition (The call took place February 7th). However two weeks later Yanukovych was overthrown Klitschko was sidelined and Yatsenyuk became Prime Minister, both in the post-Maidan interim government and in Poroshenko’s elected government after May 25 2014 elections. Elections which were not wholly democratic as fascist paramilitaries were given free reign to beat and terrorize the opposition.  Yatsenyuk had only a 3% approval rating. Arseniy Yatsenyuk was a technocrat willing to carry out the disastrous economic policies the EU was asking for bragging about willing to become the most hated man in Ukraine in order to get his austerity reforms passed. Days after the Maidan Revolution in a February 27th 2014 interview with The Financial Times he said “to have the deal with the IMF and EU… I will be the most unpopular Prime Minister in the history of my country…We will do everything not to default” He was also a radical nationalist who called East Ukrainians subhumans in a speech and created the hawkish National Front party later that year.

    Most infamous of the 3 opposition leaders was Oleg Tyahnybok of the Svoboda party formerly known as the Social National Party of Ukraine. Back in 2004 he had joined the mainstream Our Ukraine Party (Yushchenko’s party) but was kicked out after giving a deranged speech praising the UPA for killing jews and Russians (he used slurs). Still he had been able to take Svoboda into the mainstream winning 10% of the votes nationwide in the 2012 rada elections. The EU condemned the Svoboda victory in 2012 but in 2013 were happy to offer Tyahnybok their support in overthrowing Yanukovych. Ambassador Pyatt and Victoria Nuland both met with him. The other co-founder of the SNPU Andrii Parubii had joined Timoshenko’s Fatherland party. Ukraine’s defenders often mention the low number of votes fascist parties receive in elections to minimize their perceived role but neglect to mention that fascists often are allowed to join more mainstream parties and are elected on that basis. More importantly the power of fascist groups in Ukraine should be measured by their positions in the state security apparatus not how many Rada seats they hold. Parubiy was in charge of the Maidan Self Defense Forces during the Maidan “Revolution” and was rewarded with the position as head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council where he masterminded the Odessa Massacre and the start of the civil war in the Donbass. Parubii was also the mastermind behind the Maidan massacre also taking an active role. After the Maidan coup 5 Svoboda party members gained key posts in Ukrainian ministries.

   Then there was Dmitry Yarosh who headed Right Sector. Right Sector  aka Pravy Sektor was the violent vanguard of the Maidan Revolution especially in it’s later stages. It began as a force of only 300-350 and grew to thousands. It’s members had undergone years of paramilitary training and they had also supposedly been secretly sent to Poland where police trained them in how to battle riot police. They had military helmets and often bullet proof vests. They hurled stones, molotov cocktails, and wielded bats and iron bars in their street battles, as the violence escalated they built makeshift catapults and eventually graduated to fire arms. Right Sector adopted the red and black banner of the OUN-UPA as it’s flag. Svobada’s flag was blue with a yellow hand holding up three fingers (back when they were the SNPU it had been the neo-nazi wolfsangle since popularized by Azov) I mention this as earlier this year I rewatched the documentaries “Ukraine on Fire,” “Masks of Revolution” watched for the first time the Netflix documentary I’d long avoided “Winter on Fire” all three films covered the Maidan Revolution and I was struck by the sea of Right Sector and Svoboda flags the crowds were waving which the average western viewer at the time would be completely oblivious to. Dmitry Yarosh had headed Stepan Bandera’s Trident (Tryzub) the predecessor to Right Sector that worked as “raiders” for the oligarch Igor Kolomosiky helping him violently seize his rivals business. Kolomoisky’s TV channels played a major role in promoting the Orange Revolution and the Maidan Revolution and later the rise to power of President Volodymyr Zelensky who would turn on his patron.

    Right Sector resulted from a merger of 4 fascist militias in the first week of the Maidan “Revolution” these included Yarosh’s Stepan Bandera’s Trident, UNA-UNSO (Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian National Self Defense) which used to be lead by Yuri Shukhevych the son of UPA leader Roman Shukhevyvh. UNA-UNSO had fought in a number of proxy wars with Russia in the 1990’S. The third group White Hammer was a small group of neo-nazi skinheads known for refusing to suspend it’s anti-semitic hate crimes during the Maidan Revolution. The fourth group to join Right Sector was the revived SNA (Social National Assembly) the political wing of “Patriot of Ukraine” lead by Andriy Biletsky which would soon become much better known as the Azov Battalion, Azov Movement, Azov Regiment, and since 2022 Third Assault Brigade of the AFU. At the time of the Maidan revolution Biletsky was in prison for assault and attempted murder of a fellow neo-nazi back in 2011 and a plot to blow up a Lenin Statue but would be released as a “political prisoner” along with many other fascists as soon as Yanukovych was overthrown. The new minister of the interior Arseniy Avakov Biletsky’s old patron would help Biletsky transform Patriot of Ukraine and a bunch of neo-nazi soccer hooligans into the Azov Battalion by May of 2014 shortly after Biletsky’s men had participated in the Odessa Massacre.

   Most continued to call it simply the Azov Battalion even after it was expanded into a regiment in late 2014. There is a common confusion about Azov because one of it’s branches (the Battalion and then the Regiment or today 14th Special purpose group) became part of the National Guard while another part became part of the Ukrainian military eventually evolving into the 3rd Assault Battalion. Then there was the broader Azov Movement with dozens of official, and unofficial affiliates like the National militia which became Centuria or the political wing the National Corps. Today Ukraine is remaking the whole army in Azov’s image with the new 1st army corps built around the 14th special purpose brigade and the new 3rd army corps built around the Azov’s 3rd assault brigade. Patriot of Ukraine had begun as the paramilitary wing of the SNPU which is why it retained the old SNPU Nazi wolfsangle logo which it passed onto Azov Battalion. Patriot of Ukraine was originally lead by Andriy Parubiy. Eventually Biletsky became the new head and he refused to take part in Svoboda’s mainstream rebranding remaining an open neo-nazi who claimed Ukraine was destined to lead the white races of the world against the Untermenschen. To replace the political wing Svoboda  Biletsky revived the SNA which had been one of the top 3 fascist groups in Ukraine in the mid 1990’s but faded into obscurity. Biletsky was in prison for assault and attempted murder during the Maidan “revolution” but was released as a “political prisoner” after Yanukovych was overthrown. Biletsky’s old patron Arsen Avakov the ethnic Armenian gangster turned Governor of Kharkov would be appointed to head Ukraine’s interior ministry where he came up with the plan to recruit fascist paramilitaries into volunteer battalions and later transformed them into national guard units. Back when he was governor of Kharkov he had used Biletsky’s Patriot of Ukraine as his private army to harass and assault his business rivals. 

Dmitry Yarosh head of right sector had a powerful Patron of his own the past and future head of the SBU Nalyvaichenko. Nalyvaichenko was also the Volodymyr Viatrovich Ukraine’s future “memory Czar” in charge of remaking Ukraine’s national mythology to glorify the OUN-UPA. The New York Times would have it’s readers believe that CIA involvement in Ukraine began after the “Maidan Revolution” (it began when the CIA was created in 1947) when Nalyvaichenko the new SBU head called them and asked for help. I’m referencing the fascinating New York Times limited hangout articles on the CIA role in Ukraine from 2024. Thus we are supposed to believe that the CIA played no role in the Maidan revolution, had no interest in what it’s longtime fronts in the USAID and NED were up to in Ukraine and and was ignoring Ukraine one of the world’s most important geopolitical hotspots in the world and the site of it’s coming showdown with Russia until after the Maidan Revolution. It’s an absurd fairy tale. The CIA operate in every country in the world whether ally or enemy at all times they merely expand or reduce their role in each country as circumstances demand.

   This leads to the topic of how the U.S. government laid the groundwork for the Maidan revolution in the years prior to it taking place. I discussed Gene Sharp and the origins of the Color Revolution techniques in part 4 of my “Fascism in Ukraine” series examining the little known “Granite Revolution” which took place in Kiev in late Soviet times and how the NED were able to get pro free market Russian liberals like Boris Yeltsin into power to destroy the Soviet Union. In Part 5 I discussed the Orange Revolution which prevented Yanukovych from being elected in 2004. 

   The U.S. tactic of Color Revolution is quite simple the U.S. funds armies of activists, social media influencers and journalists via hundreds of NGO’s that it funds via USAID and the NED. They work to indoctrinate people to demand human rights, democracy, and other buzzwords while ignoring the glaring inequalities in society, the brutality of the American empire and other topics of concern to genuine revolutionaries. They work to discredit the government weaponizing genuine grievances about corruption incompetence and lack of transparency etc. Eventually when the U.S. decides it’s time to launch a coup aka “Color Revolution” it mobilizes this network of NGO’s and uses it’s journalists and social media influencers to get ordinary citizens to join the protests. If they can manage to get 1% of the population to gather in the capital they can demand the president step down and will appear to be supported by an overwhelming majority of the populace. Any attempt at a violent crackdown makes it easy to portray the president as a violent dictator. Eventually the President is forced to resign, flee or is brutally murdered. A new government is formed usually even more corrupt and incompetent then the old one. Around the world naive people celebrate this triumph of democracy and then forget all about the country in question until the next crisis. 

   As I mentioned earlier in Ukraine 2014 this recipe for a largely bloodless color revolution had an extra ingredient that had been introduced during the “Arab Spring” ie introducing violent extremists into the mix. In Libya and Syria it was al Qaeda offshoots and other terror groups like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Al Nusra, or ISIS. In Ukraine it was violent neo-nazi paramilitaries like Rights Sector, Bratsovo and CI4. C14 were the new military wing of the Svoboda party created to replace Patriot of Ukraine the 14 stands for the infamous 14 words of American Neo-Nazi David Lane and doubtless a play of words on the explosive C4 in Ukrainian the name looks like Sich which is what the Cossacks called their fortresses. Ukrainian fascists love referencing Sich’s as there is another fascist group called Karpatska Sich. 

    A familiar figure from the Orange Revolution Oleh Rybachuk Yushchenko’s liaison to the Ukrainian (and probably western intelligence agencies) during the Orange Revolution. In 2008 Pact Inc an HIV Umbrella NGO funded by USAID gave 7 million dollars to Rybachuk’s NGO UNITER. In 2010 Rybachuk created the Ukrainian Action Center (better known as Center UA)which was an umbrella group of 60 NGO’S of activists and journalists that would form the basis for the network of liberal activists that would take part in the Maidan revolution. UNITER would eventually involve into the New Citizen Group which would play a major role in the Maidain Revolution and by 2013 had grown into an umbrella group of 150 NGO’S. Among the journalists and activists it funded was Mustafa Nayem he worked for Ukrainska Pravda (a USAID funded newspaper) worked for  Hromadske TV which Geoffrey Pyatt allocated $50,000 as soon as he became Ambassador in August 2013 and had set up the Soros funded Ukrainian Crisis Media Center and Euromaidan PR. Nayem an ethnic Afghani had voted for Svoboda back in 2012. His brother was the lawyer for C14. Mustafa Nayem also ran the Stop Censorship Campaign which claimed Yanukovych was on the verge of becoming the next Putin. 

   Nayem would secure his place in history when he launched the entire Maidan revolution the night of November 21, 2014 with a single facebook post after Yanukovych had refused to sign the EU association agreement. Pro- Maidan journalists and academics love to tell this story how a single face book post inspired 50 protestors to show up the crowd grew to hundreds, then  thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. The whole thing is less miraculous when you realize Nayem was simply part of a network of 150 NGO’S funded by the U.S. Canada, the EU and the UK. In addition to government funders their are also the corporate donors who have worked for decades with the CIA using their foundations to funnel money to various political warfare projects. Back during the Cold War the Ford and Rockefeller foundations were the most infamous for this. In the post cold war era George Soros has become most notorious for this he played a major role in funding NGO’s in numerous color revolutions in eastern Europe including both the Orange Revolution, and Euromaidan in Ukraine. In Ukraine Soros had set up the International Renaissance Foundation. In 2013 there was also a new player on the scene the Omidiyar network which provided $500,000 to Rybachuk’s Center UA equal to 36% of it’s budget. The Omidiyar network funded many other NGO’S as well. Omidiyar went on to buy the faux independent media outfit The Intercept.

    Now I’ll turn briefly to the supposed cause of the Maidan Revolution the long negotiations on the EU Association Agreement. Yanukovych was performing a delicate balancing act between Russia and the EU trying to play both sides against each other to the benefit of himself and Ukraine. Many in Ukraine wanted to join the EU and naively believed that Ukraine would be transformed over night into a wealthy western European country. Other Ukrainians especially in the east where Yanukovych’s supporters lived wanted closer ties to Russia since their industry required Russian and other post-soviet countries markets. Russia wanted Ukraine to join it’s new Eurasian Economic Union. Russia was open to Ukraine joining the EU except for the fact that thanks to Sikorski’s EU eastern partnership program the EU association agreement  had become a NATO trojan horse. In addition Russia did not want to be flooded with cheap goods from EU countries entering via Ukraine. Russia wanted to be a negotiating partner since it’s economy was so closely interlinked with Ukraine’s but the EU’s Manuel Barossa flatly ruled this out. 

   The EU also demanded harsh austerity measures in Ukraine as a condition of joining. Yanukovych tried to get the EU to provide loans that would help Ukraine’s economy survive the impact of these austerity measures and offset the impact of the inevitable loss of Russian markets that would result if he signed. They offered him a paltry $833 million. Compare that to the hundreds of billions the Ukraine war has cost. Having read multiple accounts of these events this year I began to wonder if some in the EU wanted Yanukovych to reject the agreement so it could be used as a pretext to launch the coup. Russia was already obstructing the entry of Ukrainian goods to pressure Yanukovych. Russia now offered Yanukovych  an economic package worth $15 Billion not to sign. On November 21 2013 Yanukovych decided not to sign the EU association agreement. He doubtless thought that the negotiations would continue and the EU might give him a better deal later. Instead that night Mustafa Nayem made his infamous facebook post that sparked the color revolution that would topple him. After the “Maidan Revolution” the new government signed the EU association agreement as a result exports fell 45% GDP declined 30% the minimum wage was frozen and 10% of civil servants were laid off. Poverty, unemployment and even hunger skyrocketed. A steep price for Ukraine’s “European future.” 

   The night of November 21, 2013 the Maidan color revolution/fascist coup began. On November 24, 2013 the first violent clashes with police took place an event most accounts leave out since they blame the start of the violence on the government crackdown of November 30, 2013. On November 25 2013 the Mayor of Lviv from the fascist Svoboda party announced plans for secession from Ukraine. Yanukovych did not send troops to West Ukraine in response as the interim government would later  do in the east. While all eyes were on Kiev few noticed that throughout the Maidan revolution in West Ukraine protestors seized government buildings, local politicians declared independence, fascist paramilitary groups seized arms depots. They did all the things the so called “Russian Separatists” in East Ukraine would later do. On November 29th Right Sector was formed although the future right sector had already joined the protests on November 24th. November 30th was a pivotal day in the escalation of the protests into a full blown effort to overthrow the Government. Actually the crowds had already begun to shrink. At 4 am riot police arrived to clear the Maidan square using the excuse of the upcoming Christmas holiday and the need to install a giant Christmas tree.  Right sector had been given walkie talkies that could listen in on police and had probably been warned by elements of the Yanukovych government who were in on the coup plot. In the documentary Ukraine on fire former Yanukovych security official blamed the crackdown on Yanukovych’s chief of staff Serhiy Lyovochkin who was close to Nuland, Pyatt, and Yatsenyuk and got  Popov to launch the crackdown. Katchanovski’s account confirms the involvement of Lyovochkin and adds that Lyovchkin’s InterTV channel broadcast one sided coverage of the events and covered up the violence carried out by Right Sector. The opposition media had been warned in advance and were there to film events at 4 am. At the time Yanukovcych disavowed the crackdown and promised a full investigation.

   In any case at 4 am Ukrainian police arrived to clear the square and were brutally attacked by Right Sector who then withdrew. The police then went on a brutal rampage against the peaceful protestors beating many which produced a huge public backlash. The same day the Kiev administration court banned protests on the Euromaidan until January 7th when winter holidays would be over. Also on November 30th 10 ambassadors from EU countries had joined the protest. The next day December 1, 2013 the crowds at Maidan had grown tremendously. In the pro-Maidan mythology this was another key date when the middle aged joined the protests to defend their activist children against “a brutal dictator.” Yet this influx of average citizens was quickly overshadowed by the activities of the far right who began to attempt to seize government buildings in Kiev including the Presidential administration. Right Sector, Svoboda, and Bratsovo (an obscure fascist group “The brotherhood”) launched an attempt to seize the Presidential Administration building. Right Sector also stole a bulldozer 

and drove it into police lines. 

   In December the protests again began to dwindle as people went home for the holidays. The U.S. began to intervene more directly to keep things going, On December 5 Assistant Secretary of State for Eurasian affairs Victoria Nuland arrived with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt to hand out either cookies or sandwiches at Euromaidan to police and protesters.  Nuland bragged that she had a tough but productive conversation with  Yanukovych to pressure him not to attempt to crush her pet color revolution. On December 15th Senator John McCain who was a former WACL member and headed the NED’s republican branch the IRI addressed the crowds from the Euromaidan stage telling them “We are with You.” He was joined by Senator Chris Murphy who was busy writing up a sanctions package for Yanukovych if he dared to obstruct the Euromaidan Revolution. The senators were standing right next to Svoboda party head Oleg Tyanhybok as they addressed the crowd. 

   On January 1, 2014 it was the Anniversary of Stepan Bandera’s birthday and fascist paramilitaries and their. supporters held torchlit marches in his honor in Kiev, Lvov, and Ivano-Frankivsk. In Kiev 15,000 joined the torchlit parade in honor of Stepan Bandera. During the Euromaidan a huge portrait of Stepan Bandera was present on the stage. To keep warm in winter the crowds were instructed to jump up and down “If you are not a Moskal”  moskal is a racist slur for Russians. Russian veteran, car wash employee, and car thief turned independent journalist Arsen “Motorola” Pavlov observed this to his disgust. He would later join Strelkov’s volunteers and  achieve social media stardom as a commander in the war on the separatist side. It should also be noted that since Andre Parubiy controlled the Maidan Self Defense Forces they also controlled who was allowed entry to the protests. East Ukrainians and ethnic Russians risked being beaten if they tried to attend branded as “Titushkis”. Titushkis was a slang term for thugs loyal to the Yanukovych regime or the party of regions but paranoid Ukrainian protestors were liable to label anyone they didn’t like as Titushkis. Far right militias also violently attacked left wing Ukrainians, anarchists, trade union activists and LGTBQ activists who joined the protests. 

    Things began to heat up again in January after the winter holidays had ended. Across West Ukraine government buildings were seized and secession was declared during January. In Kiev on January 10, 2014 protestors including 4 Rada deputies 3 from Svoboda and one from Fatherland attacked a Berkut (Riot police) van in the ensuing battle 20 Berkut were wounded and 17 Protestors were wounded. On January 14, 2014 Right Sector and Svoboda attempted to blockade the Rada and the Presidential Administration to prevent the budget from being passed. On January 15, 2014 Svoboda leader Oleh Tyanhybok promised violent resistance to any attempt to clear the Euromaidan. On January 16, 2014 Yanukovych got a law passed that would make many of the protestors tactics illegal like wearing masks, or helmets or setting up tents. The protestors dubbed them “The dictatorship laws” and once again they produced a huge backlash and the protests swelled. 

   Also on January 16 2014 2,000 Berkut riot police arrived in preparation to clear the Euromaidan. Right Sector responded with escalating violence using catapults to fire bricks and fire bombs at the police. On January 19, 2014 Right Sector seized the Justice Ministry building. On January 21, Klitschko was sprayed with a fire extinguisher when he tried to stop Right Sector from leading the protestors into a battle with the police at Hrushevsky Street. An 11 hour battle ensued with the police using tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets while Right Sector hurled bricks and molotov cocktails. Over 100 were injured. Also on January 21, Right Sector shot 3 protestors (the killings were blamed on the government) the three were all foreigners a Belorussian, an Armenian and a Ukrainian. Their deaths were meant to further mobilize international support. Between January 20-21 2014 235 Police and Berkut were wounded by the “peaceful protestors.” On January 21,2014 Vitaliy Klitschko began secret negotiations with Yanukovych. On January 22, 2014 Dmitry Bulatov a leader of Auto-Maidan staged his own fake kidnapping and crucifixion. Automaidan was an NGO of car drivers that took part in the protests Bulatov was kicked out of Automaidan and decided to stage his own kidnapping and supposed crucifixion. His injuries were too minor to support his story but the international media promoted his story and he was rewarded with a cushy government post. Subsequent official investigations debunked his tale. His story was combined with that of another fake story that of fascist (she was a former UNA-UNSO member) independent journalist Tatiana Chornovil who was beaten in a road rage incident but claimed she had been kidnapped and beaten by the Yanukovych government. The press and Western politicians then claimed that Yanukovych had a hit list of activists who he planned to kidnap and torture citing the Chornovil and Bulatov cases as proof. Chornovil was later involved in an arson attack on the Party of Regions headquarters that left an employee dead. After the Maidan revolution she was elected to the Rada. On January 28th Yanukovych revoked the protest laws.

   It was in second half of February 2014 that events reached their bloody conclusion as far as the success of the coup went. In reality of course it was the start of a civil war that would leave thousands dead. February 18-20 2014 the violence had already spread to the provinces where pro-maidan protestors battled AntiMaidan protesters. The AntiMaidan movement had been started by the Party of Regions in hopes of mobilizing support to resist the coup. It would quickly turn on it’s sponsors. It would evolve into an armed uprising and lead to civil war. Back in Kiev at the same time from February 18-20 2014 the infamous Maidan Massacre would take place. Ukrainian Canadian political scientist Ivan Katchanovski has written a masterpiece on the topic “The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: The Mass Killing That Changed the World” it’s available free online. In it he proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sniper attacks were carried out by Andriy Parubiy, Right Sector, Svoboda and volunteers from the Baltic countries and Georgia. He relies on an exhaustive study of the video evidence, witness testimony including 14 self confessed Maidan Snipers, ballistics, and forensics to prove his case. Katchanovski is a West Ukrainian, a student dissident during Soviet times and supporter of the Orange Revolution but as a specialist in political violence decided to expose the truth of the case despite his political sympathies. He published the first scholarly study of the Maidan massacre and had his house seized by the Ukrainian government as a result. The police were being filmed during the entire massacre  and so by comparing the time stamps Katchanovski proves that they were not firing at the times the victims were shot. Police snipers only arrived after the massacre ended and they fired up towards the maidan snipers while the victims were killed from above. Katchanovski shows that 100 Maidan snipers stationed on 20 different buildings all controlled by Maidan protestors did the killing shooting both police and protestors. Right Sector and Svoboda members were warned in advance to avoid Euromaidan during the coming massacre. C14 the armed wing of Svoboda were given shelter in the Canadian embassy during the massacre. The two most notorious buildings used in the massacre were the Hotel Ukraina controlled by Svoboda and the Music Conservatory controlled by Right Sector. 

   Ironically the Hotel Ukraina was full of western journalists some of whom had their hotel rooms invaded by Maidan snipers. Yet despite all the evidence the international media almost uniformly blamed Yanukovych for the killings. The massacre was planned well in advance according to the Georgian snipers they were brought to Ukraine back in 2013 before Maidan even started to scout out suitable firing positions. Oleh Tyahnybok himself claims that he met with an unnamed western official who told them that at least 100 people needed to die in order to justify Yanukovych’s overthrow. This was a convenient number for the Ukrainian nationalists as the UPA had once been organized into hundreds, modeled on the earlier cossack hundreds. After the massacre the victims became known as the “Heavenly hundred” although less then 100 people died and to raise the numbers they included people who had died of natural causes or suicide. February 18, 2014 was known as black Tuesday with 17 deaths in Kiev. On the same day police tried to take right sector headquarters which was in the Trade Union Building they had earlier seized. Right Sector burned it to the ground instead. On the same day Right Sector and the Maidan Self Defense Forces tried to storm the Rada. On February 20, 2014 the “Maidan Massacre” took place in which 49 protestors and  13 police were killed. Between February 18-20 74 protestors and 17 police were killed, 300 protestors were wounded and 200 police and internal security troops were wounded.

   The next day on February 21, 2014 the EU negotiated an end to the conflict Yanukovych agreed to hold early elections, create a government of national unity, and return to the Orange Revolution constitution which gave the Rada more powers and weakened the President. Putin himself pressured Yanukovych to sign. As part of the agreement the police were withdrawn from Euromaidan and the protestors were supposed to give up the buildings they seized. However when the opposition leaders brought the agreement to the crowd at Euromaidan it was angrily rejected. Ironically it was a fascist (later self confessed) Maidan sniper Volodymyr Parasiuk who convinced the crowd to reject the negotiated settlement claiming the Massacre which he himself had secretly taken part in had forever delegitimized Yanukovych. His views were seconded by Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh. Fascist paramilitaries took over Yanukovych’s house but he was already gone having fled on February 19 when he learned Right Sector planned to seize his house and kill him. On the morning of February 22, 2014 Yanukovych fled to Kharkov where a meeting of his supporters was planned and then to Russia. According to Ivan Katchanovski there were 5 separate plots to kill Yanukovych that day. Back in Kiev there was an unconstitutional vote to remove Yanukovych from office. Presidents leave their countries all the time and it is not usually regarded as a legal justification for a coup. In addition the Rada was short of the necessary votes. More importantly Right Sector had kidnapped many of them and forced them to vote and Right Sector was patrolling the halls of the Rada threatening people to vote for impeachment. Across Ukraine fascist paramilitaries were beating and humiliating politicians often videotaping themselves throwing politicians into trash cans. Local governments were forced to resign at knifepoint. The Governor of Kharkov was forced to resign at knifepoint and the mayor of Kharkov was shot in the back. This is why I have called these events a “fascist coup.” 

   On the morning of February 23, 2014 Putin set in motion plans for Crimean re-unification/annexation after an all night meeting with Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and his chief of staff Sergei Ivanov. A majority of Crimeans had long sought either autonomy within Ukraine or re-unification with Russia. Crimeans had voted for independence in the early 1990’s. They had been granted autonomy but it had been taken away. In the late 1990’s they elected a Pro-Russian president who had been forced to flee to Russia when Yeltsin refused to back him. The process had started unofficially back in 2013 when the right wing Russian oligarch Malofeev had visited Crimea and met with pro-Russian politicians. During the Maidan revolution Crimea’s deputy prime minister Ruslan Temirgarlev met with Vladimir Konstantinov and Sergei Aksyonov leader of the Russian Unity party at cafes to secretly plot autonomy, independence or re-unification.  Aksyonov was nicknamed “the Goblin” and had strong ties to organized crime. Back in December 2013 Konstantinov had told Patrushev a key Putin adviser dubbed “the most dangerous man in Russia” that Crimea would secede if Yanukovych was overthrown. Patrushev had long backed Crimean separatism. They greeted the news that Putin would back their plans with joy and surprise.  

   Even before Putin had made his decision on February 21-22 Russia had sent Spetsnaz (Russian Special forces) and marines to Crimea. On February 26th the Crimean Rada planned an extraordinary session to remove Yanukovych’s Party of Regions appointed leaders and appoint new ones. Outside there were two dueling protests one made up of Euromaidan supporters and Crimean Tatars the other of Anti-Maidan protestors and Crimean separatists. The Crimean Tatars (or Mongols) had once ruled the peninsula conducting slave raids and allying with the Turks until Crimea was conquered by Catherine the great in the 18th century. During World War 2 they collaborated with the Nazis and were deported by Stalin. They had returned in the late Soviet period. Their leaders had formed an alliance of convenience with the Ukrainian nationalists as they were the least pro-Russian part of the population. On February 26 their leader Rafat Chubarev lead an angry mob into the Crimean Parliament and met with the Crimean separatists warning that if they voted their would be a riot. They were short of a quorum anyway and canceled the vote. On February 27 at between 2:00 Am and 4:30 AM 50 Russian Special Forces commandos and 500 local volunteers of the Crimean Self Defense forces seized the Rada and rounded up the deputies for a vote. Sergei Aksyonov was elected Prime minister after this “Crimean Coup.” Across Crimea the “Polite People” or “Little Green Men” a mix of Russian military, local volunteers, mercenaries, veterans, organized crime thugs, private security firms surrounded Ukrainian military bases and patrolled the streets. Among them was ex-FSB colonel Strelkov who negotiated with the Ukrainian Navy  and created a small 200 man Crimean Special Forces group. On February 28 1,400 Spetsnaz were flown to Crimes. Things went smoothly as a majority of the Crimean population supported independence. Between March 2, and March 16 many Ukrainian military and security forces defected to the crimean side including the head of the Ukrainian navy. On March 1 2014 the plan was to return to the Ukrainian constitution of 1992 it wasn’t until March 5 that Putin agreed to Kontantinov’s request for full re-unification with Russia. March 5 the wording of the Re-unification referendum was decided. The Referendum was scheduled for March 16. With a voter turnout of 83% 97% voted to rejoin Russia. Although the west claimed the elections were rigged opinion polls confirmed that the vast majority of Crimeans favored reunification with Russia.

   At the same time as Crimea was being re-unified with Russia events were heating up in Eastern Ukraine. Yanukovych had originally planned to attend a Party of Regions conference in Kharkov on February 22 but cancelled due to an assassination plot. The meeting was held anyway and the politicians issued a lukewarm statement condemning the coup and calling on local governments to maintain order. Pavel Gubarev an east Ukrainian former minor politician who ran a PR agency and was a Russian nationalist and follower of Russian fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin attended this Kharkov meeting and realized that there was a power vacuum and that civil war was imminent. He liquidated his company funds and decided to launch a revolution with his old college buddies. Across East Ukraine there were 200 protests attended by 130,000 protestors against the maidan coup. They called the new government the “Kiev Junta” and chanted their support of the Berkut. The majority favored federalization as it would grant them self rule in the new russophobic Ukraine. The day after the coup the first thing the Rada did was revoke Yanukovych’s law granting Russian and other minorities language rights in local regions. Interim President Turchynov decided not to sign it the following week but it reflected the goals of the new government and by then it was too late to stop the backlash. On February 28, 2014 Gubarev declared the new government illegitimate a view shared by roughly half the population of Ukraine at the time. By March 1st Gubarev had been “elected” People’s Governer of Donetsk by cheering crowds of protestors. He and his friends began searching for guns and Gubarev called for the creation of a Donbass People’s militia. On March 6th Gubarev was arrested by the SBU but his wife helped lead the rebellion in his absence. Across eastern Ukraine angry crowds seized local government buildings but were chased away by Ukrainian security forces. In Kharkov protestors seized the regional administration building but were chased off by the future Azov who killed two protestors in the process. In Donetsk the protestors seized the Regional Administration building Mar 2, 2014 were expelled by the SBU, retook it March 5 and were expelled March 6. The protestors retook it yet again on April 6, and yet again April 12, 2014. On April 8 Interim President Turchynov threatened to launch an anti-terrorist operation in the protestors did not lay down their arms and relinquish control of government buildings. At this stage the vast majority of the protestors were unarmed. April 12, 2014 was also the day Igor Strelkov arrived in the Donbass and seized MVD headquarters. April 12-13 was also when the CIA director John Brennan flew to Ukraine. On April 13, 2014 Interim President Turchynov announced the Anti-Terrorist Operation or ATO a declaration of war on East Ukraine. Also on April 13 Avakov announced plans to recruit 12,000 “patriots” (neo-nazis like Patriot of Ukraine aka Azov) into volunteer battalions. By April 14th Government buildings were being seized across East Ukraine including Mariupol, Kramatorsk and Makiivka. They demanded that local officials either join their rebellion or resign. By April 21st local councils in Lugansk were planning to hold 2 referendums 1st on Autonomy scheduled May 1st and second one on independence or reunification with Russia scheduled for May 18, 2014. Independence referendums were scheduled in Donetsk as well.

   It’s clear from this that when Strelkov arrived in the Donbass on April 12 2014 the uprising was already in full swing. His famous quote about pulling the trigger on the Ukraine war is true in the sense that the ATO was declared the day after he arrived but false in the sense that some other incident would have caused Turchynov to declare the ATO. The new Ukrainian government essentially rushed into war less then 2 months after seizing power. If they had delayed and allowed things to de-escalate, had they been willing to make a few minor compromises war could have been easily avoided. In April 2014 only 1/3 of the populace of Donetsk and Lugansk favored secession or re-unification with Russia although a majority favored some form of federalization or autonomy. War however was seen as great way to remake the country by the far right nationalists. The United States also hoped war would drag Russia into the crisis embroiling them in a costly war that might destabilize Russia and provide the rational for cutting Russia’s economic ties to Europe. War would allow the U.S. to tighten it’s grip on it’s European vassals and isolate Russia.

   To return to Strelkov he left Crimea on April 8, with 52 volunteers. Strelkov had a lot of experience in fighting in proxy wars and civil wars, he’d fought in the brief Transtria war, fought along side the Serbs in Bosnia, joined the Russian military and served in Chechnya and then joined the FSB in 1996 where he fought in the 2nd Chechen war after that he continued to serve in the FSB until resigning in March of 2013. Strelkov’s mission was backed by the Oligarch Malofeev who funded it  and the head of Crimea Aksyonov who hoped the Donbass uprising would distract Kiev from retaking Crimea. Alexander Borodai the future Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s republic tried to get Strelkov to cancel the operation via the FSB. Borodai did PR work for Malofeev and had known and hated Strelkov for years. Strelkov turned off his cell phone to avoid his former FSB bosses telling him not to go. More honest pro-western journalists like Anna Arutnyan admit that most likely Strelkov was disobeying rather then following orders when he entered Donetsk. Strelkov was a monarchist who spent his free-time doing historical re-enactments of the Russian civil war as a white officer. Strelkov arrived in mainland Russia and met with Gubarev’s wife who helped arrange his transport. Strelkov hoped for a military truck to pick his men up but the best the rebels could provide was an newspaper delivery van. Strelkov’s men walked across the border and after an exhausting march arrived a day late and finally found the news truck. Strelkov had originally planned to head for Shahtyorsk but his local contact advised him to head to Slavyansk instead. They managed to bribe their way past  the police with only 50 Hryvnia and arrived in Slavyansk where they seized the local MVD headquarters firing only warning shots. They arrested the local police chief when he told them to disarm and seized SBU headquarters which they made their new headquarters. 

   There were already 300 volunteers to the rebel militia in Slavyansk when Strelkov arrived. Still the locals were impressed by the more battle hardened men. According to “Wild” the Donbass militia man who picked them up “They smelled like war and exuded some unfathomable sense of determination.”   Strelkov’s men were divided into 4 man teams who formed a nucleus around which the local volunteers formed squads and later companies. There were also many militia volunteers in nearby Kramatorsk and Red Liman. On April 13 2014 the day the ATO was declared the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) battled the Militia in Semyonkova 8 KM north of Slavyansk and suffered their first casualties with 1 killed and 4 wounded. Strelkov’s men ambushed 25 paratroopers and convinced them to surrender 3 even agreed to join the rebels. On April 15th the 25th air brigade were heading towards Kramatorsk but were met by a crowd of protestors who blocked their path. Strelkov’s men arrived and convinced them to surrender and were able to gain armored vehicles and a single Nona artillery piece. On April 15, the AFU attacked Slavyansk with 500 men 2 helicopters and 20 APCs. Somehow the outgunned rebels managed to repel this attack. On April 16-17 Russia atttended the Geneva Summit despite threatening to boycott it if Ukraine used force. A failed peace plan was negotiated and an easter truce was declared. The Geneva agreement consisted of a declaration of principles which had 3 points quoted in Petro’s “The Tragedy of Ukraine”

 “1.All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The participants strongly condemn and reject all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance including anti-semitism.

2.All illegally armed groups must be disarmed: all illegally seized buildings must be returned to their legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.

3.Amnesty will be granted to protestors and to those who have left buildings and other public places and surrendered weapons, with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes.

 

   Needless to say neither side implemented this agreement Ukraine would have had to ban the fascist paramilitaries while the Donbass republics would have had to disarm and surrender relying on an amnesty. On easter which was on April 20th the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday Yarosh lead Right Sector in an attack on a checkpoint outside Slavyansk breaking the ceasefire. One of the Right Sector men was carrying a rifle used in the Maidan massacre. The Ukrainian government and media claimed that the attack never happened and that it was all Russian disinformation. However a year later Yarosh bragged about the attack and claimed it had been directly ordered by President Turchynov himself. On April 26th the FSB ordered Strelkov to unmask he interpreted this to mean that Russia had abandoned any plans to recreate the “Crimean Scenario” in the Donbass and that he was basically on his own. On May 2, the AFU launched another massive assault on Slavyansk they were unable to take the city but were able to take Mount Karachun which had a Russian TV broadcast tower and overlooked Slavyansk. From this position the AFU would later be able to relentlessly shell the city starting May 27.

   However the May 2 attack on Slavyansk was overshadowed by the “Odessa Massacre” which also took place on May 2. Odessa was home to a large pro-Russian population who staged large anti-maidan and later separatist protests. There had been minor street battles there between pro and anti maidan protestors. Odessa was Ukraine’s most important port and so the new government were determined to crush the separatist movement there. The massacre was planned in advance by Parubiy who traveled to Odessa and met with a local fascist paramilitary leader who he gave a bullet proof vest to and who was later a ringleader of the massacre. Parubiy sent 500 veterans of his Maidan Self Defense forces. In addition a train load of neo-nazi soccer hooligans from Kharkiv arrived future Azov members. The local Russian separatist organization was called Odeska Druzhyna and had only about 300 members. 

   On May 2 the fascist paramilitaries held their Unity rally of 2,000 fascist fighters. They were attacked by Odeska Druzhyna and 2 Right Sector members were killed. However later investigations showed that they were probably killed by their own side. Regardless they were enraged and killed 4 counter demonstrators in revenge. Odeska Druzhyna were outnumbered 10 to 1  and withdrew from the fight. While these street clashes were taking place the local police were forced to attend a meeting with the national police and required to turn off their phones so they couldn’t interfere. The angry mob of Right Sector and future Azov then headed for the Pro-russian tent encampment where peaceful protestors had been gathered for weeks many of them elderly. The mob attacked these protestors who were forced to flee inside the trade union building. The mob fired into the building with guns and lit it on fire with Molotov cocktails. The local interior ministry ordered the fire department not to put out the fire and they arrived late. Those who managed to escape the fire were brutally beaten by the fascists. Officially 34 people died in the fire while 8 were beaten to death their were 200 wounded. Local activists claimed  that there were over a hundred dead victims buried in a secret mass grave. Eventually the police arrived and arrested the survivors of the massacre rather then the perpetrators. The entire Odessa Massacre was captured on videotape but none of the perpetrators were ever convicted.

  The Massacre polarized Ukraine those who supported Euromaidan openly celebrated the massacre on social media. The victims were compared to Colorado beetles because of their striped St Georges ribbons. These St. George ribbons had been traditionally worn in support of Red Army veterans and had now been adopted as a symbol by those resisting what they saw as “the fascist Kiev Junta” and supportive of the “Russian separatists”. In Russia and eastern Ukraine the Odessa Massacre galvanized support for the Donbass uprising and the number of those volunteering for the DPM (Donbass People’s Militia) skyrocketed. A week later on May 9th celebrated as Victory Day (over the Nazis) in Ukraine, Russia and other former Soviet countries the lesser known “Mariupol Massacre” took place when the Azov national guard attacked pro-separatist police and protestors who were occupying the Interior ministry. 20 pro-seperatists were killed and 1 pro-Euromaidan fighter was killed. They also attacked a bunch of elderly people marching to celebrate victory day as according to Ukrainian fascists May 9th should be seen as a day of mourning and defeat. Ukraine’s long “memory war” had turned into an actual war.

   

    On May 5 Donetsk “People’s Governor” was released from prison along with two other DPR supporters in exchange for the release of 3 captured SBU Alpha commando’s. Gubarev had been arrested March 6, By SBU alpha after helping to spark the Donbass uprising. Gubarev ended up running the DPM recruitment board. On May 7th Putin called on Donetsk and Lugansk to delay their independence referendums which were scheduled for May 11th yet another sign that Putin was hesitant to intervene. The separatists ignored the request and the referendum was held on May 11th in Donetsk 89% voted yes and in Lugansk 96% voted yes. The separatists claimed that 75% of the population voted while the Ukrainian government claimed that only 35% voted. Also in May across the border in Rostov the Wagner group was forming. Wagner would later capture the Lugansk airport. Later still Wagner would assassinate seperatist commanders on orders of the Prime Minister of Lugansk Igor Plotnitsky including Alexander “Batman” Bednov and possibly Alexei Mozgovoi. On May 25th Ukraine held it’s first Presidential elections post coup it was not exactly “democratic” as fascist paramilitaries were allowed to beat humiliate and attempt to kill opposition candidates but Putin decided to recognize it  as legitimate to the disgust of the separatist republics and their supporters in Russia. Petro Poroshenko was elected President of Ukraine he began secret negotiations with Russia on ending the war but on July 1, he decided to launch a full scale offensive to crush the separatists. It was in late May or early June that Russia began to send light weapons to the separatists who early on didn’t not have enough weapons to arm the volunteers so that the checkpoints were manned by unarmed fighters who had to call in help if the AFU or fascist paramilitaries arrived. 

   On May 27th the AFU began shelling Slavyansk and in June 2014 the situation became dire. The city was soon without water or electricity and under constant bombardment. At the beginning of the month a bus carrying wounded civilians for treatment left every day and by the end of the month 2 buses were required to carry the wounded every day. Two thirds of the population fled. Strelkov had imposed martial law executing looters and sentencing people to dig trenches for lesser offenses. Despite the dire situation the city became a symbol of resistance for Russian nationalists and east Ukrainian  separatists. Eventually the city was semi encircled. Strelkov received orders from his former FSB bosses to hold the city at all costs and to fight to the death. On July 5, to the shock of the remaining locals Strelkov ordered a retreat most of his men escaped but they lost their armored vehicles when their commander launched an an armored attack instead of merely providing a distraction as he’d been ordered. Still most of the DPM managed to escape abandoning Kramatorsk as well. In July Russia began supplying heavy weapons to the separatists. They also began firing artillery and MLRS at the AFU from across the border. Also in July Russian Spetsnaz (Special Forces) entered the war.

  The tide of the war had shifted in Ukraine’s favor by August they were on the verge of cutting Donetsk off from Russia. On August 15 Strelkov was forced to resign as minister of defense of the DPR. Borodai was also forced to resign August 8 and was replaced by Alexander Zhakarchenko a local who had run the veterans organization Oplot and commanded a militia. Borodai had taken Zhakarchenko to meet his Russian contacts in July. Aside from Strelkov and Putin’s mutual loathing of one another it was also embarrassing to have two Russian nationals in charge of Donetsk. The DPM were fighting a loosing battle to maintain control of the strategic town of Illovaisk. At the same time the AFU had overstretched their logistics lines in their eagerness to capture Illovaisk. On August 15 2015 the same day Strelkov resigned Russia sent a small invasion force into Ukraine. Zhakharchenko announced the arrival of 150 APC’S 30 tanks and 1,200 troops from Russia. The Russian military together with the DPM launched a two pronged assault on the Ukrainians at Illovaisk surrounding them around August 24th. Putin then intervened and offered the AFU a safe corridor to retreat. According to the Ukrainians they were then ruthlessly slaughtered when they tried to retreat. The pro-separatist version is that the AFU refused to drop their weapons and ignored orders to wait instead attempting a break out. Either way an estimated 400 AFU were killed and Ukraine was decisively beaten for a moment. The DPM were on the verge of retaking Mariupol but Russia ordered them to stop. Russia had only intervened to force Ukraine to sign the Minsk 1 agreement not to help the DPM win the war. Russia withdrew it’s forces and cut back on supplies to the rebels. The terms of Minsk I quoting Scott Horton’s “Provoked” “included a ceasefire, prisoner exchange, withdrawal of heavy military equipment and fighters from eastern Ukraine, all to be monitored by the OSCE. There was also a promise by Kiev to a reconstruction program for the Donbas and a new “special status of autonomy and local elections”

   Despite Minsk 1 the war continued Ukraine wanted revenge for it’s humiliating defeat at Illovaisk and the People’s Republics hoped to capture or liberate more territory before the conflict was frozen. The AFU refused to give up control of Donetsk airport as stipulated in Minsk 1. Back in May 2014 the airport was under the control of Ukraine’s SBU but the DPM were able to take it. The AFU were able to retake the airport and kill 100 DPM in the process. The airport was the scene of a terrible debacle for the DPM who accidentally killed dozens of their own in a friendly fire incident. It was also the perfect place for the AFU to call in artillery strikes on Donetsk from because it’s towers provided a great view. In December the AFU worked out some sort of shady deal with the rebels allowing them to resupply their troops in the airport possibly in return for allowing Donetsk to fix it’s water supply. The airport’s AFU defenders were known as “Cyborgs” for their fierce resistance. They were made up mostly of Right Sector’s OUN battalion. Just prior to New Year Eve the the DPM launched an offensive to retake the airport. On January 22, 2015 the DPM finally retook the airport destroying it in the process and fighting brutal battles in the underground tunnels occupied by the AFU. The airport had been newly refurbished back in 2011 and it’s destruction came to symbolize the senseless destruction of the civil war. 

   The AFU also controlled a huge salient at Debaltseve which threatened to cut off Donetsk from Lugansk. This was the scene of the last major battle of the war January through February 2015. Russia again sent it’s troops to intervene in hopes of forcing Ukraine to sign the Minsk II agreement. Minsk II was signed before the battle was ended with another  defeat for the AFU. As part of Minsk II the Donetsk and Lugansk peoples republics were forced to give up 600 square kilometers of newly captured territory. Again I’ll qoute Horton’s concise summary from “Provoked” Minsk II “While largely rehashing the points [from Minsk I] regarding the military situation, the deal elaborated on Donetsk and Lugansk’s special status, detailed OSCE responsibility for monitoring the ceasefire and also essentially demanded the Ukrainian constitution be rewritten to establish stronger federalism for the region and protection for the Russian language. Kiev never lived up to it. The Rada quickly passed a law that made implementation of Minsk II impossible by requiring Russia to transfer control over Ukraine’s eastern border before new [local] elections were held, contrary to the terms of of the agreement they had signed - and a definite deal killer.”

   Technically the Peoples republics were forced to give up all hopes for independence or reunification with Russia but since Ukraine refused to implement Minsk II they remained quasi independent until Russia finally recognized them on February 21, 2022 3 days before the full scale Russian invasion. The war never truly ended it merely reduced it’s intensity. The frozen conflict became a ticking time bomb that exploded with the full scale (but not unprovoked) Russian invasion of February 2022 leading to a war that is 10 or 20 times as bloody and destructive as the original Ukrainian civil war which according to the UN cost 15,000 lives. In April 2015 Ukraine passed it’s infamous decommunization laws making it illegal to criticize the OUN-UPA or to praise the Soviet Union. In 2017 Ukraine declared a full economic embargo on the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics all social payments were stopped and the locals were cut off from Ukraine’s banking system. This lead to bizarre black market deals between President Poroshenko and the republics for Donbass coal. Many famous commanders of the Russian separatists were assassinated some by Ukraine, some by Russia, and some as a result of local feuds. This included Arsen “Motorola” Pavlov in October 2016, Mikhail “Givi” Tostykh in February 2017 (who lead the Somali battalion in the Battle of Iilovaisk) and the leader of the Donetsk People’s republic Alexander Zhakharchenko in August 2018. The people faced constant electricity and water shortages. Hunger ravaged the region as elderly pensioners were cut off from government support. Also in 2017 as Russiagate hysteria raged in the U.S. Republican congressmen were in Ukraine egging on another Ukrainian offensive to take back the Donbass. 

   In August 2021 Ukraine’s Rada passed the Reznikov plan for re-integrating Donbass and Crimea on extremely harsh terms all local officials were to be barred from ever holding office along with anyone who with action or inaction had threatened the national security of Ukraine. All languages except Ukrainian were to be banned. Museums on Russian aggression were to be built in the major cities of the recaptured territories and a military occupation would be set up. Zelensky later appointed Reznikov his defense minister. Small battles continued in the Donbass 2015-2022. NATO carried out a series of provocative military exercises in Ukraine.  Zelensky bragged that he would retake the Donbass. Russia amassed troops on Ukraine’s borders. Russia’s diplomatic overtures were dismissed by the Americans. Putin foolishly decided to invade Ukraine with only 120,000 men and the Russia-Ukraine war began. Three years later the war continues a brutal war dominated by drones in which soldiers often die miles behind their own lines as they head for the battlefield. Small groups of soldiers battle in the ruins of towns and cities. Hundreds of thousands have died more have been wounded and millions have been forced to flee Ukraine. 

   

Sources

“Ukraine in the Crossfire” By Chris Kaspar de Ploeg is an excellent account of the Maidan Revolution and Ukrainian civil war. It also provides in depth coverage of the disastrous economic effects of Ukraine’s post Maidan neoliberal reforms.

“Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia the West and the “New Cold War”” by Gordon M. Hahn provided an in depth account of the geo-political conflict over Ukraine between the West and Russia. He provides a thorough dissection of color revolution tactics in both the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan, and provides a history of NATO expansion.

“The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict Resolution” by Nicolai N. Petro provides great background on how the competing ideas of Ukrainian identity lead to the civil war. He gives great coverage of the far right in Ukraine.

“Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine” By Scott Horton covers the past 30 years of U.S. relations with Russia in great detail. It also covers the wars in Yugoslavia and the secret U.S. support for islamic terrorists as well as the Maidan coup and civil war. It also thoroughly debunks Russiagate.

“The Maidan Massacre: The Mass Killing That Changed the World” by Ivan Katchanovski provides a detailed account of the events of February 18-20 2014 exposing the Maidan Massacre as a false flag terror attack meant to discredit Yanukovych. It also covers the 5 attempts to assassinate President Yanukovych. It also provides detailed coverage of the Maidan Massacre trials and the information they reveal that contradict the official narrative. The book is available free online.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-67121-0

“The Russia-Ukraine War and It’s Origins: From Maidan to the Ukraine War” by Ivan Katchanovski came out just as I started writing this article so I only had time to read a couple chapters but it does an excellent job of sorting out fact from fiction on this controversial topic. It’s available free online

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-98724-3

“From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right” by Michael Colborne provides a good description of the Azov movement despite being written by a Bellingcat journalist who erased all his twitter threads on the Azov movement after the Russian invasion. He lays out the history of the Azov Battalion, it’s National Corps, it’s many front groups, it’s ideological  and it’s international networking with other fascist groups, it’s alliance with Russian neo-Nazis and other important topics.

“Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands” by Richard Sakwa is a good account of how the divisions in Ukrainian society lead to the Civil War.

“Hybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers and Moscow’s Struggle for Ukraine” by Anna Arutunyan does a great job of disentangling fact from fiction in an attempt to expose Russia’s covert war in Ukraine while at the same time revealing how it was in many ways grassroots rebellion. Russian foreign policy is sometimes made top down and sometimes from the bottom up. Her book is useful as she is a pro-western Russian liberal who went into exile to protest the Russian invasion yet she debunks many of the myths put out during the war by Ukraine, Western governments and the mainstream media.

“Neonazis & Euromaidan from Democracy to Dictatorship” Covers the history of Svoboda, Right Sector, Patriot of Ukraine and other Ukrainian fascist groups prior to Maidan as well as a history of the Maidan coup and the start of the war from a Russian perspective.

“Torch of New Russia” by Pavel Gubarev the former “People’s Governor of Donetsk” is memoir covering his early life and his role in sparking the Donbass uprising. It’s useful for showing just how little planning and resources went into sparking the “Russian Spring” Gubarev describes himself as a “Eurasianist” meaning a follower of Russian fascist chameleon Alexander Dugin. Dugin was active in Ukraine prior to Maidan some of his followers sided with the Ukrainian fascists like Olena Semenyaka who became Right Sector’s spokeswoman and later a chief Ideologue for the Azov movement in charge of outreach with fascist groups from around the world. The Dugin movement plays a similar international role of networking with fascists around the world to gain support for Russia. I oppose fascism wether it is pro-Russian or Pro-Ukrainian but Gubarev’s book is still useful as a source.

“85 Days in Slavyansk” By Alexander Zhukovsky is an oral history of the early months of the war compiled by a far right Russian volunteer. It provides a much more detailed account of the war with it’s many small skirmishes from the “Russian separatist” perspective. Their is a glaring gap in the literature on the Ukrainian civil war in books that focus solely on the military history of the 2014-2015 war and books that cover the post Minsk II battles in Ukraine.

Death is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare” By John Lechner covers the rise and fall of the Wagner group which was formed to fight in the Ukrainian civil war by ex-con Prighozhin and neo-nazi Russian special forces vet Dmitry “Wagner” Utkin. It discusses Wagners role in the war which included capturing Lugansk airport and the assassination of Russian seperatists who were considered too independent. The book also covers Wagner operations in Syria and Africa. And of course it covers the Prighozhin mutiny of 2023 and the death of Prighozhin and Utkin in a plane bombing.

“Foreign Entanglements: Ukraine, Biden & the Fractured American Political Consensus” By Arnaud Develay covers former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s corruption scandals and political manipulation of Ukraine. It also covers the lawfare between Biden and Trump using Ukraine. It also delves into the controversial topic of U.S. Biological warfare laboratories in Ukraine.

“The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order” by Glenn Diesen covers the roots of the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war from an International Relations perspective. Diplomats are trained in a highly abstract and simplified version of history living called “International Relations.” Diesen lays out this bizarre intellectual history and contrasts it with the new multipolar order.

“Ukraine Masks of Revolution” a French documentary on the role of the fascist far right in post maidan Ukraine shows fascist paramilitaries given impunity to beat and threaten the opposition to the new government, the early days of the Azov Battalion and provides in depth coverage of the Odessa Massacre.

https://youtu.be/6VO0f43dcLQ?si=AP1c-ImQwZVR9gDC

“Welcome to Nulandistan” Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya documentary on the Maidan coup and start of the Ukraine civil war from early 2014 contrasts the lies of the Obama administration and state department with footage of actual events and includes the infamous leaked phone calls between Nuland and Pyatt, Ashton and Paet, and Yulia Tymoshenko’s inflammatory statements. It also includes footage of Ukrainian fascist paramilitaries firing on peaceful protestors in Eastern Ukraine.

https://rumble.com/v4qsn49-welcome-to-nulandistan-must-watch-cz-link-v-popisu.html

“Ukraine on Fire” from executive producer Oliver Stone examines the Maidan coup and lays out the basics of a “Color Revolution” unfortunately it contains a number of errors in discussing the history of the OUN. It also provides interviews with Putin and Yanukovych on events in Ukraine as well as famed investigative journalist Robert Parry. It can be found on Youtube but can’t be shared

Peter Korotaev’s Events in Ukraine blog is a great source on Ukraine news covering fascism, corruption scandals and the war.

https://eventsinukraine.substack.com

Moss Robeson has started a great new blog on the Azov Movement

https://azovlobby.substack.com

Moss Robeson’s Bandera Lobby blog covers the fascist Ukrainian diaspora and their involvement in Ukraine

https://banderalobby.substack.com

Moss Robeson’s blog on Ukraine “Ukes, Kooks, and Spooks”

https://mossrobeson.medium.com