this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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I don't know where you're from, but I think you also "hate hate Russia with a passion" and it's clouding your judgement, because you live in some alternate reality if you believe all that.
There's an old clip of Nuland where she says the US spent 5 billion dollars promoting democracy in Ukraine. There's also the famous "Fuck the EU" clip of her deciding who's going to be PM before the coup even happened. Then there's her and lots of other western politicians on stage at the Maidan. McCain famously shook hands with a Nazi leader on there.
Can you imagine what you would say if all these things were done by Russia instead of the US?
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I have seen both clips. The 5 billion was over like 30 years as foreign aid which is like pretty common for the US, there are like 50 other countries that also receive aid like this. And the other one I know is when Nuland 'selected' their next leader who was the leader of the opposition who would have been in power anyways.
All those politicians showed up after it happeded as I said.
You can also verify the laws Yanukovych was trying to pass. They pretty obviously are meant to turn him into the dictator of Ukraine. I would protest that.
Well that's fine then I guess. The US "aids" pro-US political groups with billions of dollars everywhere! How nice.
There are pictures of them on the Maidan. Before the coup. News articles in the western press. What is this kindergarten? Do you have no object permanence?
Yes but what if this time the US didn't want something out of it? If the US did want something out of it there would be evidence of it, surely? Like a website for privatising Ukrainian assets? Or IMF reports explaining how half the loans were given to pay off the previous ones until Ukraine dismantled it's manufacturing industries, military capabilities, and devalued it's currency? Or, I don't know, an article like the one in the OP that quotes someone explaining the US is only involved to quell dissent about it's failing economy among it's domestic workers.
What I was saying is that no, 5 billion wasn't given to some shadowy group in Ukraine to do a coup, it was the standard foreign aid the US throws around to advance it's interests.
Also yes, politicians go around shaking hands all over the place. I though you meant they went to Ukraine to specifically support Euromaidan before it happened but any politician supporting that visited after.
Ultimately the laws that triggered the protests were very protestable. If Kaia Kallas tried to pass those here I would be taking up a pitchfork and torch right now. There is no evidence to suggest it was some group paid by the US but plenty to suggest people protested because their leader was screwing them over.
Obviously protestors have a reason for protesting and the CIA isn't handing out cash to random schmoes. They're just giving money to various groups that organize and support the protest, or they pay for positive media coverage. Groups they've been cultivating for decades. Groups that are coordinated by the US state department and will do basically what the US embassy tells them to do.
Again, imagine you had protests in Estonia, and the groups involved were long-time funded by Russia, and Russian officials made appearances at these protests to hand out cookies and shake hands, and Russian-funded media was riling up the protestors, and some of the people involved are straight up far-right fascists that hate your ethnic group. And then you hear a leaked phone call of Lavrov discussing who's going to be the new PM of Estonia, and a couple of weeks later, shooting starts (no one knows how exactly and nobody is too interested in finding out) and your old PM gets ousted without proper procedure, and the guy the Russians said they liked is in, and the far-right fascists also gets posts, and they hate you. WHAT WOULD YOU THINK?
The initial protest, that were gunned down, were started by students at like midnight because the leader tried to sneakily pass the dictatorship laws... Also as I said the money was given over like 30 years. If they were discussing the new PM and it was the person who was 100% going to be PM then that would be irrelevant as I said.
At best all of this is some slightly sussy things that seem maybe related but if you look into all of them individually they are basically meaningless. But if you look at what the people were protesting it makes perfect sense to protest this.
So the 2 options boil down to:
Option #2 seems way more believable to me.
Yes, the US cultivates influence groups that then, at the right time, take over real protests involving actual people with actual grievances, as a cover to carry out coups. They have done this many times. They do this because they want to loot and exploit countries for cheap labor and resources, and in this case, also to put a whole army in Russia's face.
Some questions about your explanation: He just wants to be dictator? Why? Who's backing him and why? Why would he be so stupid as to shoot at the protestors?
Have you ever seen that documentary about the failed coup to overthrow Chavez, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"? Private pro-coup TV channels told everybody the pro-Chavez protestors started shooting at the opposition, which was the mainstream narrative at the time. This was used as justification to oust him (temporarily). But the documentary filmmakers (which happened to be there filming at the time) show that it was snipers shooting at both pro- and anti-Chavez demonstrators.
Why does anyone want to be a dictator? Like Lukashenko is pretty hated but he seems to get a kick out of it. In the US that florida guy who looks like homelander looks like he would do a dictatorship. I don't get it but plenty of people seem to want to be dictators.
It's probable that Yanakovitch was backed by Putin, I think there was some crazy loan he gave the guy after he pulled away from the EU but I could be entirely wrong. He could just want to be a dictator with no one backing him like Lukashenko initially, though now he is definitely cozied up to Putin.
Dictators tend to be pretty stupid and just want to play strongman. Like why did Mao kill the sparrows and trigger a massive famine. Because he was an idiot, hell pretty much all parts of the great leap forward was insanely stupid. Or when Stalin had that science guy who said communist crops will not compete for nutrients and that triggered insane famines. Again because he was a moron. Or why did Lenin kill all his allies that wanted democracy. Because big dumb and that got Stalin into power who ran a bloody empire only outdone by Hitler who was also a fucking moron and let his dog decide military maneuvers. Seems like there's a pattern here.
Never seen that and don't know much about Chavez so can't comment on that. He always seemed like the guy people from the US talk about and people from the US generally have dogshit political takes. Americans gave the world ancaps and I won't forgive that.
So they're just evil madmen? Well that explains it. A job well done. Maybe you've watched too many movies?
I never said evil, pretty sure at least some dictators had good intentions. I said they were all stupid, I can't really find any exceptions to it either. Also movies tend to portray dictators like some genius madmen which is extremely wrong, like most nazies were absolute troglodytes but movies portray them as some strategic geniuses. Like their missiles were initially so shit because their scientists believed the earth was flat and didn't take the curvature of the earth into consideration.
Every dictator at some point shows what a moron they are and so far that has played out in history.
It's quite telling that the US has triggered so many coups around the world that you can call it 'the standard foreign aid'. How the hell do you think coups come about?
Is promoting democracy foreign aid?
I've lived in cities with a much larger population than all of the Baltics. What, exactly, are three medium sized suburbs going to do against Russia?
Have an actual military instead of a meat grinder disguised as one.
Wait did you just said Baltics have actual military? Compared to... Russia? All of them combined have less that 50000 active military personnel with pretty weak armament and basically nonexisting navy and airforce (all three combined have literally zero combat airplanes).