[mrjangles]

>Yanukovych decided to flee on his own

What on earth does that even mean?

If you watch the videos the entire city was on fire and the "peaceful protestors" were firing rocket propelled grenades at the police force. And the Democratically elected leader, Yanukovych, had to flee the country and give control over to the insurrectionists or he would have been murdered.

I guess you can say "That wasn't a coup" if you like, but we would really just arguing about semantics here.

[Isinlor]

The protests were peaceful at the very begging in November 2013. Then protests were dispersed and the spiral of violence escalation started culminating in death of around 100 protesters and less than 20 police officers in February 2014.

Towards the end it was certainly not a peaceful ordeal. It was more of a small uprising.

I recall snipers shooting to protestors.

But I don't recall RPGs being used by either side when I was following it. I could not find any mention of it right now. Any sources of that claim?

[maratc]

On Feb 21st 2014, the EU foreign ministers and Yanukovich signed on a deal where there would be speedy elections — that would most certainly remove Yanukovich from power, somewhere in spring.

But on Feb 22nd, the protesters refuse that deal and seize Yanukovich's palace, stripping him of power immediately. After which he flees.

It's that seizing of the palace and rejecting the EU-brokered deal is what is usually called "the coup".

[csee]

Because a popular revolution shouldn't be labelled a "US-backed coup", and labelling it as such strips agency from the protesters who made it happen. Getting the label right is important given that this is a critical part of the Kremlin's justification for the invasion: casting the current Ukrainian government as illegitimate, and stripping Ukrainians of agency and their identity.

The evidence that it was a US-backed coup is quite weak; from Nuland's leaked call, to Nuland handing out sandwiches to protesters, to the speculative opinions of Estonia's FM, to the few billions of investments the US has made into civic institutions since 1991 -- it's a little bit of smoke if you squint really hard and apply a good dose of confirmation bias, while simultaneously sweeping under the rug Russia's more aggressive colonial meddling in Ukraine (such as Yushchenko's poisoning).

Maybe better evidence will emerge later about 2014 as records are declassified (such as it did with Diem's overthrow), it's possible and wouldn't be surprising, but barring better evidence, it needs to be labelled the 2014 Maidan Revolution, or something similar.

[Isinlor]

Yes. Westerners and Russians seems to think that everything is organized by USA and that people of other nations do not have any autonomy.

A lot of people seem to think that Poland or Baltic states were somehow forced into NATO. Certainly narrative that China is trying to sell right now.

We knew very well that aligning ourselves with Russia is just straight road to disaster. And we needed to get as far as possible as soon as possible from Russian imperialism when we had a small window of opportunity.

Ukraine was split on it and it did result in disaster.

[maratc]

> Because a popular revolution shouldn't be labelled a "US-backed coup"

What do you suggest we label a situation where the US government officials get in touch with people opposing the regime in a foreign country, in protests (that turned violent) and talk to their leaders, designating one of them to lead the future government and vetoing some of them from joining that future government?

(Note that the leaked Pyatt-Nuland call is from before Feb 5th. They apparently talked to Yatsenyuk to lead the future gov't, and they are discussing that Klitchko and Tyahnibok stay out while supporting it. On Feb 27th the new gov't is sworn in, lead by Yatsenyuk, with Klitchko and Tyahnibok on the outside.)

On similar note, what would you call a situation where Russian gov't would get in touch with people opposing the ruling US order and organize a regime change in US? "Popular Revolution" or "Russia-instilled coup"?