>organized with western NGO funding and support
>openly backed and approved by western politicians
>"bottom up revolution"
who are you trying to fool here lol
All revolutions have had at least some form of outside support in modern history, so Euromaidan getting some doesn't make it "manufactured" to me. The grievances that led to Euromaidan were certainly very real before that.
Yeah, it wasn't just oligarchs fighting oligarch with nationalists. Are you deluded?
Given that Euromaidan originated primarily from organically developed Ukrainian grievances against the Russians, no, it wasn't just "oligarchs fighting oligarchs".
You don't get the insanity of Euromaidan from just "oligarchs fighting oligarchs", and everything I've read so far suggests to me that Viktor Yanukovych was just generally unpopular and seen as far too "buddy-buddy" with Russia in the lead-up to that.
So if you leave your place, I sneak there and change locks, does it mean that it's mine? Good.
If I moved out of my place permanently and entirely, taking all of my belongings with me, and you somehow earned the place through a vote within the local community, then yes.
Because that was what would be more analogous to the end of Euromaidan.
"a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government." it doesn't mean shit if it was done by a bunch of nationalist with the oligarch money.
What was "illegal" about the protests? What was even particularly "power-seizing" about the riots (which were indeed damaging)? And given that the Euromaidan didn't lead to any one single person or group
gaining power, despite the overwhelming Euromaidan victory, and the subsequent votes, elections, returning the Ukrainian constitution to its 2004 amendments, etc., the entire process of Euromaidan was basically retroactively made "legal", if anything in it was ever "illegal" to begin with.
And all revolutions were "illegal" under the previous system, only to retroactively become "legal" once they succeeded.
Yeah, nationalist didn't try to rob Crimea of it's autonomy which let them straight into Russia's arms, eastern regions didn't look at them trying to legally destroy the status of russian language and said "fuck it" and tried to held a referendum, and you know the rest.
Crimea was literally conquered by Russia and then Russia held sham "referendums" to "legitimize" its takeover that were actually unconstitutional under both Ukrainian and Crimean law. There were no attempts to "rob Crimea of its autonomy"; what came before that was unrest from the Russian ethnic elements in Crimea after the epic clusterfuck of the Euromaidan.
And what made what the eastern regions of Ukraine did with their "referendums" and general separatism any more "legal" or even anything less like a "coup" than what the Euromaidan did? Indeed, I'd even argue what those Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine are doing seems more like a "coup" than Euromaidan ever was.
Once again, I cannot speak for everybody, but the majority agree the government change in 2014 was not an organic, grass roots movement. The reasons for this are many, but the two most prominent ones are as follows:
1) the majority of Ukraineans did not have an axe to grind with Russia until the Crimean debacle, so the openly antagonistic course of the new government (breaking the trade agreement, threatening not to extend Crimean naval base lease, immediately establishing course towards NATO) gave most Russians a whiplash. Of course, the sentiment changed over the following 8 years, but we are talking about what it felt like then.
2) the US was openly gloating about the success of yet another "emergent democracy" they spent 5 billion dollars to "support". And, of course, there was the optics of Victoria Nuland handing out cookies to protesters. This is a hilarious example of cross-cultural miscommunication: in the US, handing out baked goods is perceived a sign of support and goodwill, but in Russia it is the ultimate sign of betrayal (we have a kindergarden tale about a boy who ratted out his WW2 resistance cell and had them all killed over a barrel of jam and a basket of cookies).
The Ukraineans desire to lead a better life within European Union was/is understandable, but the inherent Slavic cynicism makes many Russians think the Ukraineans would be treated as second-rate citizens in EU at best (thus all the "cleaning Polish toilet" jokes) while in Russia they would be/are treated as equals. With every other family having relatives in Ukraine and about 5 million Ukraineans earning money here, they are/were not discriminated against, at least compared to the muslims.
I reiterate that I speak only from my personal experience and expouse the opinions of the people I personally know.
Understandable. What do you say, from personal experience, are the opinions of the Muscovite Rus' on the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and the "
Russian Spring" that happened there post-Euromaidan?