Leo ·
Heres where things get interesting:
There was a leaked conversation between Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, American diplomats that occurred in January 2014. In the conversation, they mention that they prefer Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be Prime minister. This leaked conversation was characterized as the US coordinating who would take power post-Yanukovich, supporting the narrative that Maidan was a US backed coup. And this is the enduring characterization of that conversation. You can ask Chat GPT and it will say the same thing. But a careful review of the conversation and the events surrounding it reveal a very different reality.
(Note: Im actually a little dumbfounded that the US didn't do a better job challenging this narrative. Upon my review, it seems obviously wrong... yet I had to come to this conclusion on my own, there's no one out there promulgating this counter narrative... Very odd!)
The missing context here is that at the time, in the months leading up to February, Yanukovych had proposed a power sharing agreement with the opposition as a way to diffuse tensions and negotiate a settlement that would prevent violence and end the demonstrations. That power sharing agreement included giving the Prime Minister position, and others to the opposition.
Victoria Nuland and other diplomats from European countries were PUBLICLY there in Ukraine to negotiate that agreement. They were, at the time, meeting with both the opposition and Yanukovych.
Given this context, re-reading the transcript of their leaked conversation everything makes alot more sense. In their conversation, they were NOT discussing a post-Yanukovich government. They were discussing ongoing public negotiations that they were invited to by Yanukovych and giving their recommendations to the opposition of who they felt they should include in the power sharing agreement. I can do a line by line review of the conversation to validate this, but it is pretty clearly true.
So lets re-characterize then: The leaked Nuland conversations ARE NOT an indication of the US organizing a COUP of the Ukrainian government. They were actually actively trying to keep Yanukovych in power as president and avoid an overthrow by helping negotiate a peaceful resolution.