DISINFO: Kyiv persecuted those who did not recognise the Euromaidan coup
SUMMARY
The 2014 Euromaidan was a coup by the Western-backed Ukrainian opposition. Following that coup, the new government in Kyiv began to persecute those who did not recognise the coup and created a threat to Crimea, which forced its population to ask for Russian protection, soon after they started a war in Donbas.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about the 2013-14 protests in Kyiv falsely portrayed as a coup d'état orchestrated by US and the West and about the illegal annexation of Crimea, trying to deflect Russia’s responsibility for its unprovoked military aggression.
The popular demonstrations that began in Kyiv in November of 2013 brought hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on to the streets to protest against a political decision of Viktor Yanukovych’s government, which at the last minute, withdrew from a long-negotiated political association and free trade pact with the EU, choosing instead to accept a $15 billion economic bailout from Russia.
Russian propaganda has made a tremendous effort to deceive the whole world by disguising its military aggression in eastern Ukraine. One of the borderline cynical and most frequently used myths is portraying Russia’s invasion, occupation and war crimes as a civil war in Ukraine.
The conflict in Donbas is not a civil war but an act of Russian aggression.
No international body has recognised the so-called Crimea referendum, announced on 27 February 2014, and held on 16 March 2014. On 27 March 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in which it stated that the referendum in Crimea was not valid and could not serve as a basis for any change in the status of the peninsula. On 17 December 2018, the UN General Assembly confirmed its non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea.
The European Union does not recognise and continues to strongly condemn this violation of international law, which remains a challenge to the international security order. In response to the illegal annexation of Crimea, the EU has imposed restrictive measures against the Russian Federation. In June 2021, the European Council decided to renew the sanctions introduced in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol by the Russian Federation until 23 June 2022.
Read similar cases claiming that West started the Ukraine conflict by staging the 2014 Euromaidan coup, that the Nazi regime in Ukraine kills civilian population in the Donbas, that the Crimean people chose to be with Russia through the democratic procedure, that Crimea never belonged to Ukraine and that Crimea’s reunification with Russia was legal.