MTG rekindles debate over the 2014 Ukrainian coup debate

Did the US government support the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014, or is it its Russian propaganda?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican Party) rekindled the debate on this eight-year-old question in a comment when she issued an anti-war statement on Ukraine on March 16.

“The potential war with Russia is not comparable to Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s been an eight-year smoldering conflict, and peace treaties have been routinely violated by both sides … Obama’s State Department in the previous administration It is a country where the government exists only to support the overthrow. ” Green said..

The last part of Green’s statement turned out to be particularly controversial, with fact checkers and experts coming out of woodwork and blaming Green’s claim. She accuses her of spreading “Russian propaganda.”

“The allegations that the United States promoted the 2014 Maidan Revolution overthrew the government of the Ukrainian President, who had an alliance with Russia. Victor Yanukovych“It was a staple of Russian propaganda and an important part of justifying Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” Whitehouse correspondent Andrew Feinberg wrote in an independent column. ..

However, Green was not the first to mention the role of the United States in fueling tensions in Ukraine. Also, her MAGA-style conservatism is not the only faction to make such a claim.

Indeed, a broader cross-cutting coalition of national security experts agrees that the United States has played a role in the collapse of Janukovic — a former CIA Russian analyst to the left of the conservative retired Army Colonel Douglas McGregor. Stray Magaburn, and think tanks such as the Cato Institute, Defense Priorities, and Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

According to these groups and experts, Ukraine has been struggling to brew between Russia and the West for years before the war heats up in 2022.

Former Reagan White House official David Stockman pointed out that perhaps pro-Russian Yanukovych actually started a trade deal with the European Union in March 2012. However, such transactions could not culminate, as all involved parties are still struggling to recover from the 2008 financial crisis. That is why Yanukovych turned to Russia.

“Kyiv quickly switched to trading with Russia in the fall of 2013. Russia was ready to provide a $ 15 billion loan without strict IMF preconditions.” Stockman wrote in February.. “Moscow also offered Ukraine a discount on large Ukrainian gas purchases from Russia.”

Western officials were angry with the 2013 Russia-Ukraine agreement. So did many pro-Western Ukrainians, especially young people living in the western part of the country.

When pro-West Ukrainians went out to the streets to protest in late 2013, top US national security officials showed public support.

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), Who was ranked Republican on the Senate Military Commission at the time, went to Kyiv. Show solidarity Eat with activists and opposition leaders, including members of the ultra-right wing Svoboda Party..

Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European Eurasian Affairs at the time, Distribute cookies He expressed his support for their cause in several visits in December 2013 to demonstrators in central Kyiv.

And what observers see as the most compelling evidence that U.S. officials were behind Yanukovych’s expulsion, phone Geoffrey R. Pyatt was leaked online in February 2014 between Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine. There, two officials discussed who should be the next Ukrainian government following the downfall of Yanukovych.

“Yatz is that man,” Nuland said at the time, referring to Arseniy Yatsenuk, who was appointed as the new Prime Minister of Ukraine after Yanukovych was dismissed in February 2014.

At the time, State Department spokesman Jen Psaki denied that Nuland Piat’s phone was evidence that the United States had interfered with Ukrainian politics or attempted to produce certain results.

“It’s not surprising that US authorities are talking about issues around the world. Of course, that’s what diplomats do.” Saki said in 2014Calling the Russian authorities’ publications on the tape “new lows in Russian trading technology”.

However, many foreign policy experts believe that the timing of the call is not too close to a change of power and not a coincidence.

“You were in a situation where a democratically elected pro-Russian president was testified in a way that Putin could plausibly think the United States was behind. That is, Victoria, a high-ranking State Department official. Putin was secretly recorded by the Russians and was basically colluding to determine who the successor government would be after the man was taken testimony. ” Non-zero Newsletter.

“And suddenly you are a pro-American, and in Putin’s view, you have a Ukrainian government set up by the United States, and the situation at Crimea’s truly important Russian Navy base is suddenly questioned,” Wright said in December. Said to. 17th Crash the war partyA diplomatic policy podcast sponsored by Kelley Vlahos, Senior Advisor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

In addition to the signs of Nuland’s public support and her phone leaks, experts who believe she helped defeat Yanukovych said that foreign aid and the sale of weapons to Ukraine Soaring from 2014It doubled from less than $ 300 million before 2014 to more than $ 600 million in 2020.

Neither the State Department nor Nuland answered the Epoch Times question on this issue.

Russian scholar Clint Erich For Westerners, he said it was narrow to consider the characteristics of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity as a coup d’etat as Russian propaganda.

Erich, a visiting researcher at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations MGIMO UniversityHe told the Epoch Times in January that it is deeply believed in Russia that Yanukovych’s expulsion was certainly organized by the United States.

“Within the Russian government, we can assure you that they consider it an openable case,” he said at the time. “So when we negotiate with the Russians, when we talk to the Russians, it is very important to understand that they are convinced that the United States is ultimately responsible. It changes the overall framework of their decisions. “