Ukraine 2014 vs. Ukraine 2023
I found myself again consulting the EU vs. Disinfo site, which I consider helpful but which needs to be read carefully.
I was checking what the debunking site has to say about a claim that Russia has repeatedly made about Ukraine. The claim as stated here is, “US Spent $5 billion on the Ukrainian Maidan in 2014.”1 The site presents this decent summary:
However, the link it provides to what was apparently the site’s original article on the claim is dead, one of those things that we could wish the site managers would clean up.
The Euromaidan protests were a series of events that became an important political turning point for Ukraine. (The Maidan is a square in Ukraine’s capital city Kyiv.) The protests began in November 2013 against the announcement by President Viktor Yanukovych that he was rejecting an association agreement his government had negotiated with the European Union but which Russia opposed. It climaxed in the “bloodiest week in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history” in February 2014:
In February hundreds of protesters were released from jail as part of an amnesty deal that led to the evacuation of demonstrators from government buildings. The thaw in tensions was short-lived, however, as opposition parliamentarians were rebuffed in their attempts to limit the powers of the presidency, and the battle in the streets took a deadly turn. More than 20 were killed and hundreds were wounded when government forces attempted to retake the Maidan on February 18. The 25,000 protesters remaining in the square ringed their encampment with bonfires in an attempt to forestall another assault. Protesters in the western Ukrainian cities of Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk seized government buildings, and EU officials threatened sanctions against Ukraine unless the Yanukovych administration took steps to de-escalate the violence. The proposed truce failed to materialize, and on February 20 violence in Kyiv escalated dramatically, with police and government security forces firing on crowds of protesters. Scores were killed, hundreds were injured, and EU leaders made good on their promise to enact sanctions against Ukraine. Central government control continued to erode in western Ukraine, as opposition forces occupied police stations and government offices in Lutsk, Uzhhorod, and Ternopil. [my emphasis]2
This series of events soon led to the resignation of Yanukovych, who fled to Russia. After a short period of interim government, the more pro-EU Petro Poroshenko was elected President and took office in June 2014. But in the interim, Russia had taken control of Crimea and started military operations in the Donbas area of Ukraine (largely but not exclusively via local pro-Russian separatists) that would soon lead to Russian control in what were proclaimed to be the independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
As the EU vs. Disinfo article describes, the US did not spend $5 billion on that particular series of protests. But as Victoria Nuland stated, the US had spent that amount over 20 years, a significant portion of it going to democracy promotion efforts in Ukraine. This may sound entirely benevolent to many Americans and EU audiences. And the focus of the democracy-promotion effort was to promote Western-style parliamentary, liberal democracy. It wasn’t aimed at producing an armed uprising as such. Although in Vladimir Putin’s eyes, promoting peaceful efforts to establish a pro-Western democracy was also a threatening activity.
Die Zeit reported on the $5 billion in 2015:
The money flowed from 1991 to 2014. Most of it from the U.S.State Department, which handles foreign affairs, and its development arm USAID, which was set up by John F. Kennedy. He saw it as successor to the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild Europe after the Second World War.
The agency’s funds come from the U.S. federal budget. In 2016, USAID will have $22.3 billion to spend worldwide, but it has to stick to the president’s foreign policy guidelines. It is therefore a political instrument that is never completely without a political goal in mind.3
In other words, USAID is not a CIA front group - though it did play that role at times in the past.4 But it is an arm of the US government, not a neutral, independent charity.
Die Zeit described the kind of activities the US pursued in Ukraine and also noted that Russia:
… has invested heavily in a number of NGOs meant to increase Russia’s influence abroad since the Orange Revolution [in Ukraine] in 2004. Starting in 2012, $130 million has flown each year into organizations operating in post-Soviet countries and the Balkans, but particularly in Ukraine. [my emphasis]
Obviously, $130 million is less than $5 billion, and Russian diplomacy with Ukraine wasn’t limited to NGO activity. Further:
The biggest difference to the American soft power concept is that Russia isn’t trying to win anyone over with the attractiveness of its own model, but rather makes use of economic pressure and political intimidation.
But even someone failing to see a difference between Russian and American influence has to recognize that neither side now has the upper hand [in 2015] and neither is seriously in any position to steer the course of Ukrainian history. [my emphasis]
None of this says in itself that the US involvement in democracy promotion in Ukraine during those years was entirely benevolent or well-advised.
But it does mean that the US did not dump $5 billion into creating the Euromaidan events in particular. It is a reminder that the US government knew its activities in Ukraine were part of a competition for influence with Russia. Even if that may not fit comfortably into the preferred New Cold War narrative of the moment on Ukraine.
Victoria Nuland, Ukraine, and the if-we-had-done-so-and-so-back-then argument
The Victoria Nuland who made the statements cited above about the $5 billion is currently Under Secretary of State in the Biden Administration. She has been consistently hawkish on Ukrainian affairs and is married to Robert Kagan, the neocon scholar who was an enthusiastic booster of the disastrous and illegal invasion of Iraq by the Bush-Cheney Administration.
John Hudson wrote in 2015 about Nuland's reputation as a key representative to the EU at the time of the Euromaidan and the Russian invasion of Crimea.5 Nuland was a favorite of anti-Russia hawks at the time:
Nuland frequently meets with senior European leaders who outrank her and delivers messages they often don’t want to hear. …
This significant level of autonomy has led her interlocutors to fixate on her as a driving force of hawkishness within the Obama administration, whether fairly or not.
“Many Europeans, and certainly Moscow, hate Nuland, which is just one more reason why her political base on Capitol Hilladores her,” said a congressional aide familiar with the issue.
In Europe, Nuland is widely presumed to be the leading advocate for shipping weapons to Kiev — a proposal bitterly opposed by the Germans, Hungarians, Italians, and Greeks who fear setting off a wider conflict with Moscow.
This is a good example of how career warhawks like Nuland and Kagan position themselves. If you are constantly saying, we need to be more aggressive against Russia (or Iraq, or Iran, or Libya, and on and on) now now NOW - you can always say later, we could have avoided this problem if we had just done what I wanted back then to escalate war and the risks of war.
In 2023, where NATO most Western governments are enthusiastically backing weapons shipments and massive assistance to Ukraine, Nuland’s 2014 position may look unobjectionable at first glance.
But 2014 was not 2023. And Ukraine’s ability to defend itself when the Russians invaded in 2022 was a surprise even to most Western governments, according to reporting soon after the war started. The US reportedly had expected the NATO military training and other assistance for Ukraine would be mainly used for guerrilla warfare against Russian occupation in the event of a full-on Russian invasion.
But Hudson described the situation in 2015 this way:
The [Obama] White House has also argued against providing lethal assistance to Kiev because Moscow enjoys what’s known as “escalation dominance,” or the ability to outmatch and overwhelm Ukrainian forces regardless of the type of assistance the United States would provide.
And, as noted above, Ukraine was not nearly so politically stable in 2014 - to put it mildly - as it had become by 2022. Ukraine fought the Russians and Russian proxies in the Donbas in 2014. But there was no serious attempt to oust them from Crimea. The Ukrainian armed forces were not nearly prepared for such an effort and neither was the government in Kyiv in drastic political turmoil in the first half of 2014.
Since 2014, the political situation had improved considerably. There was no Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Presidency in 2014. Petro Poroshenko, who took office as President, in June 2014 was an oligarch with holdings in various industries. As Radio Free Europe reported days before the Russian invasion in 2022:
Former President Petro Poroshenko has returned to Ukraine to fight treason charges he rejects as politically motivated, setting the stage for a divisive political storm as the government seeks the support of its Western partners amid heightened tensions with Russia. …
From the airport Poroshenko went to court, which will decide whether to remand him in custody during the investigation and trial. Prosecutors requested bail of 1 billion hryvnyas ($37 million) and the wearing of an electronic tracking bracelet as a condition for the release of the 56-year-old Poroshenko, one of Ukraine's richest businessmen. …
The accusations against Poroshenko are linked to an alleged sale of coal that helped finance Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014-15, while Poroshenko was in office.6
Poroskenko has been momentarily publicly recylcled as a unifying patriotic figure, as illustrated by this recent appearance on the Voice of America7, an official American government entity:
Trying to view the Ukraine of 2014 as essentially equally capable as in 2023 would be exceptionally unrealistic - a state of mind which professional neocons seem to permanently maintain.
The US and other NATO nations have been training and otherwise assisting Ukraine since 2014. Which made their surprisingly effective resistance to the Russian invasion last year possible and even to far exceed Western expectations. The argument that “if we had just done all this in 2014 …” is standard neocon ideological posturing.
US Spent $5 billion on the Ukrainian Maidan in 2014. UE vs. Disinfo 19-Aug-2020. <https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/us-spent-5-billion-on-the-ukrainian-maidan-in-2014> (Accessed: 2023-13-05).
Editors (2023): The Maidan protest movement. Britannica Online 05/13/2023. <https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-Maidan-protest-movement> (Accessed: 2023-13-05).
Bota, Alice & Kohlenberg, Kerstin (2015): Did Uncle Sam buy off the Maidan? Die Zeit 17.May.2015. <https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2015-05/ukraine-usa-maidan-finance/komplettansicht> (Accessed: 2023-13-05).
SENATOR KENNEDY RELEASES GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE (GAO) REPORT ON CIVILIAN WAR CASUALTY AND HEALTH PROGRAM IN LAOS. CIA.gov 03/19/1972. <https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp74b00415r000200240007-3> (Accessed: 2023-13-05).
Hudson, John (2015): The Undiplomatic Diplomat. Foreign Policy 06/18/2015. <https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/18/the-undiplomatic-diplomat/> (Accessed: 2023-13-05).
Ex-President Poroshenko Defiant As He Returns To Ukraine To Face Treason Charges. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 01/17/2021. <https://www.rferl.org/a/poroshenko-ukraine-treason-/31657338.html> (Accessed: 14-05-2023).
VOA Interviews Former Ukrainian President Poroshenko: Russia is Trying to Weaponize Food: VOA News. Voice of America YouTube channel 03/16/2023.. (Accessed: 14-05-2023).