It has been ten years, not two, since the war in Ukraine began. And once you understand that, you can start thinking clearly about it. What is Britain’s interest in this conflict? Why do so many people in politics and the media applaud the carnage that has devastated Ukraine, the country they say they love and admire? What has Ukraine gained from this? What can Ukraine and its people gain from it?
I only ask that you use your minds instead of your emotions. Let’s start with what happened ten years ago. It should be shocking.
In 2014, Ukraine had a crude but functional democracy. This worked because the country was divided fairly evenly between east and west. Power swung back and forth, and in 2010 Viktor Yanukovych won the presidential election with 12.5 million votes, beating his closest rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, who won 11.6 million.
Unlike the previous election in 2004, no one seriously questioned the result. Thus, in February 2014, Yanukovych was the legitimate head of state, with two more years in power.
If we believe, as we all say, in democracy, then this is an almost sacred fact. The widespread and justified disgust at the invasion of the United States Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021 is based on the belief that power lies in ballots, not force.
There is no clearer distinction between democracies and the rest. The losers must respect the result. If they challenge it, they must use legal methods. But in general, if they don’t like who is in power, they should wait until the next election.
Militant protesters gather on the streets of the capital kyiv in early 2014, in the run-up to the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected head of state.
There is not a politician or commentator in Britain who has not said exactly this at some point in their life. It’s called “loser consent.” Our ordered lives depend on it and we cannot betray it here or abroad.
But now we come to the big exception. In February 2014, a violent mob infiltrated and came to dominate what had originally been genuine democratic protests in the Ukrainian capital, kyiv.
There’s a lot of shady stuff going on in these bitter days, including mysterious shootings of members of the crowd. Let’s just say that there is a serious dispute over who was responsible, which has not yet been resolved.
In a leaked (and undeniable) phone conversation, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton that there was “a growing understanding” that “behind the snipers, it wasn’t Yanukovych, but someone from the new coalition.
A UN report (published on July 15, 2014) concluded that 103 protesters and 20 police officers died in these events. I think at least some of the protesters were armed, and the death of 20 police officers suggests some pretty intense violence on the part of the protesters.
In the midst of all this bloodshed, two serious efforts were made to achieve a peaceful and legal outcome. The first was destroyed, perhaps deliberately, when protesters responded on Tuesday, February 18, by setting fire to Yanukovych’s party headquarters. On the night of Thursday, February 20, the foreign ministers of Germany, Poland and France flew to kyiv to negotiate a deal with the embattled Ukrainian president.
On February 21, that agreement was signed by the president, by three senior members of the anti-Yanukovych opposition and witnessed by the three EU ministers.
Yanukovych offered a new wording of the constitution to adapt it to the opposition; a new government; early presidential elections (no later than December 2014); and an impartial investigation into the violence (which there has never been). All parties renounced the use of force.
Anti-government protesters guard the perimeter of Independence Square in February 2014 in kyiv, Ukraine.
But that Friday night, the agreement was presented to the crowd on the Maidan, an unelected body with no constitutional or democratic authority. They certainly did not represent the eastern part of the country.
His bosses rejected him and threatened to “take up arms and go” to Yanukovych’s residence if he did not resign the next morning. The opposition leaders who had signed the agreement collapsed and made no effort to defend it against the angry cries of the crowd.
Yanukovych, whose security protection had vanished, left kyiv. But he did not resign and did not leave the country. A recent book by highly respected Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy shows beyond a doubt that the elected president was still in office and in Ukraine when parliament voted to remove him. The vote was illegal, as parliamentarians lacked the votes necessary to do so under the Constitution. But they went ahead anyway.
So undemocratic violence was followed by anarchy. The offer of early elections was discarded (was the mafia afraid that their faction would lose them?). Thus, a mob overthrew a legitimate head of state. And here comes the shocking proof. Western nations, including Britain, should have condemned this action. They are normally vigilant defenders of law and democracy around the world, aren’t they? But in this case, they tolerated the blow.
The then Foreign Secretary, William Hague, made a totally inaccurate statement to the House of Commons on March 4, 2014. He said Yanukovych was removed “by the large majorities required by the Constitution.” This is simply false. And so the future Lord Hague’s next statement that “it is wrong to question the legitimacy of the new authorities” seriously misled Parliament.
I spoke to Lord Hague about this. When it became clear that he did not have a good defense for his actions, he stopped responding to me and fell silent. Pathetically, an awkward letter I sent to his official address was returned emblazoned with a sticker saying he was not known there. If we had a proper opposition in this country, he would never have been able to get his way. But we don’t.
The events of February 2014 divided Ukraine and started a small dirty war in the east of the country in which (among other tragedies and horrors) many civilians died at the hands of the Ukrainian army. The disgusting Russian invasion two years ago, indefensible and barbaric, was the second stage of the war, not the beginning of it.
Of course, I don’t know who was behind Yanukovych’s overthrow. At that time there were all sorts of Western politicians and intelligence types hanging around kyiv. And the West blatantly betrayed its own principles to tolerate and forgive the unpleasant event. But that, of course, does not prove that any Western nation backed the coup against Yanukovych.
Still, in my opinion, any outside force that supported that coup is as guilty of aggression and warmongering as Putin is in Russia. Think about that as he listens to all those loud, confident voices demanding that we continue to fuel this war, in which Ukrainians die daily for democratic principles that we do not, in fact, support.