it’s like “the best of russian propaganda narratives all in one place half the price double the length”. It’s a story easy to believe for those not in the know but it has little to do with actual events. This goose is up for gavage.

The reality was that the president Yanukovych (the one who eventually fled) broke away from the so-called Donetsk clan which he represented since the 90s and started hostile takeover of the entire economy including properties of oligarchs from different regional groups. He was assisted by russians who promised him a deal similar to the one they have with Lukaschenko in exchange of several tradeoffs that involved among other things russian military presence in Crimea, economically detrimental natural gas prices and gradual disarmement and dissolution of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. It was a Faustian bargain of sorts if you think about it.

So he started to consolidate power inch by inch until he started to leave out people who brought him to power back in the 90s and elevated him to prime minister during early 2000s, and then helped him rebuild his influence during the mid-to-late 2000s in favor of his new russian friends who sold him a bill of goods. So he initiated a change of Constitution to give himself more power and get shit done. At the same time he attempted to deal with European Union to broker favorable trade deals to appease the parliament and parliamentary opposition but mainly to fuel his family’s business entities.

At some point in late 2013 russians saw through the scheme and threatened a military coup (as military and national security services were filled with their assets and agents of influence) that lead to Yanukovych doing 180 towards russia but it caused massive protests across the country that were initially ignored by the government altogether. Those protests had USAID NGO presence but it was ineffective clownshow with little substance mostly done for cameras. They weren’t involved in decision making of anything and their presence remained media-centric throughout the latter stages of the protest.

The initial wave started to simmer down by late November but due to police violently attacking students at the Independence Square in the middle of the night it snowballed into a giant protest later known as Euromaidan.

The united parliamentary opposition backed by disgruntled business elites (future president Petro Poroschenko was one of them actually) leveraged the protests and provided it with infrastructure and resourcesall while trying to reason with Yanukovych behind closed doors who by then was still somewhat in control of police and military but russians insisted on more violent response to quell the protests and potentially kickstart a civil war that would be a nice opportunity for them to swoop in and take over amidst chaos.

While Yanukovych, business elites and the parliamentary opposition negotiated - it was a stalemate on the streets that lasted until January 16 when the parliament majority voted the Dictatorship Laws that outlawed any form of civil disobedience. That caused another escalation of protests and massive surge in police violence - the infamous wall of fire at Hruschevsky Street happened right after that. This led to another attempt to find compromise among business elites, parliamentary opposition and the president - for a while it seemed like an agreement was reached only for the aforementioned violent response taking place February 18-20. That was supposed to be a start of civil war but further escalation was avoided when the Agreement on the Settlement of the Political Crisis was finally signed after a bloody fiery siege of Independence Square. The agreement intended to restore previous version of Constitution switching from Presidentially-parliamental republic back to parliamentary-presidential republic and doing Presidential elections to clear the air.

However, Yanukovych fled immediately after that more or less exposing himself as decommissioned russian asset. He left the parliament to pick up the pieces and maintain the continuity of governance. Head of parliament became acting President, the new elections were scheduled for late May and the new Cabinet of Ministers was elected to clean up the mess in the meantime.

Yanukovych didn’t have to flee - he just brokered a deal to make Maidan go away and he could weather the election cycle but this agreement turned out to be a diversion for russian Plan B - also known as russian Spring that kicked off a week later with strange things happening in Crimea. russians needed to spark a civil war to destabilize the situation, discredit the government and ease their way in by pretending to restore order. A day later Yanukovych did a press conference during which he asked russia for military intervention because “things got out of hand” even though he just signed a solution to all his problems and could’ve walked relatively scott free. But he did what he was told to - and he did that while crushing a pencil in his hands under obvious duress. Dude decided to outplay the devil, lost everything and became his bitch.

Meanwhile in Crimea - unmarked russian military started the takeover on Feb 27th that culminated with the takeover of the Crimean parliament building and mock referendum later in March that had very timid reaction from the international community. And then a wave of state institution takeovers attempts across Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odessa by armed people who claimed to be separatists but later were identified as russian nationals. This situation kicked off what was initially called the Anti-Terrorist Operation in Donbas. Kharkiv takeover ended with police storming the building and arresting the perpetrators, Odessa takeover ended in horrible tragedy when the Trade Union House burned down in early May 2014.

The military skirmishes in Donbas started to escalate further during June while international community was deeply concerned and worried. The dominant narrative back then was that this whole thing was deeply ambiguous and it is unclear who to blame. Except every single decision maker on the “separatist” side was oddly from russia with direct connection to the military or secret service but who cares about that. Then in July russians shot down MH17 and then finally led to some reaction and kicked off the first round of sanctions against russia. Then the Ilovaisk siege happened the aftermath of which led to what eventually became Minsk Protocol which was a russian attempt to appease international community and avoid harsher economic sanctions and possible military help to Ukraine and also dig in on Donbas and continue their charade.

There’s more but that’s the gist of it.

it is more complicated because this conversation leaves out a ton of historical context in favor of oversimplified definitions.

don’t subscribe to the clown two party regime

Ignoring the issue by letting the objectively worse choice win without even having a plan on reform is clowny.