Thread by @neil_abrams

Now that our old friend is back with a fresh "Maidan coup" take, it is worth reviewing just how dumb this argument is. It's not only that the general argument is dumb; in fact, every single permutation of its various strands is just mind-numbingly stupid. Let's take a look.🧵

https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1761787987187097896

Let's start with the new NYT article. "Why," Maté asks, "was Ukraine's new spy chief already on such good terms with the CIA and MI6, literally on the night of" this supposed coup?

Naturally, Maté is assuming you're not actually gonna look up the article, because if you did, you'd see that it contains quite a lot of information that debunks his contention that the CIA was "already on such good terms" with Ukraine's new spy chief.

We see lots of passages describing just how new this relationship was at the time, with the election of Yanukovych having completely severed the previous partnership between the two intel agencies. In fact, the CIA demanded that the Ukrs establish trust before jumping back in.

The newness of the relationship at the time makes sense if you take a moment to think about it. The guy who'd just been ousted was trying to align Ukraine with Russia. Why on earth would he have allowed his intel agency to maintain the old relationship with the CIA?

In fact, as the article makes clear, the only intel community that had compromised Ukraine's intel agencies up to that point was that of Russia itself. And now, the CIA was willing to test the waters again, but was very hesitant due to its irrational fear of "provoking" Putin.

So, sorry, @aaronjmate, the article you're citing to depict a long-entrenched CIA in Ukraine which had been able to shepherd the "Maidan coup" through to completion actually makes precisely the opposite point: That the CIA was hardly present at all there beforehand.

@aaronjmate Moving on, what are the various strands of the argument that the Euromaidan was a Western-backed "coup?" There are several, all of which - again - are quite stupid. Let's review:

@aaronjmate To begin with, when you think of the word "coup," what kinds of things come to mind? Probably a conspiracy by *actual state officials* - say, the military or security agencies - to oust the head of state, right? Well, that's exactly how political scientists define it too.

@aaronjmate Is that what happened during the Euromaidan? Was there a conspiracy of state officials to overthrow Yanukovych? Quite the opposite, in fact; the state remained mostly loyal. It was an estimated 8.5 million Ukrainians who sought to oust the president.

@aaronjmate Due to the idiotic policy of the site owner to throttle tweets with URLs, I unfortunately can't provide the link to that. So just type "Річниця Майдану – опитування громадської та експертної думки" into Google Chrome and click on "translate."

@aaronjmate Anyway, the point is, the key actors in the Euromaidan were not state officials but the Ukrainian public as a whole. That ain't a coup. Even if you believe the tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory that the whole thing was organized by Right Sector, that still wouldn't make it a coup.

@aaronjmate It was the massive crowds that made Yanukovych believe he had to flee. Not that he was in any particular danger, ensconced as he was at his luxurious estate outside of town. But, being a coward, he opted to flee, and it was the crowds, not anyone in the state, who convinced him

@aaronjmate But what about Victoria Nuland's super-mega-powerful cookies that she handed out to Maidan protesters - a favorite line made by Kremlin apologists like Maté? People, when 20% of the population swarms the streets to oust the leader, they ain't doing it because of the cookies.

@aaronjmate Speaking of Nuland, Russia apologists also point to a leaked conversation between the U.S. ambassador and herself which supposedly shows them plotting a coup against Yanukovych.

The transcript plainly shows otherwise.

https://twitter.com/neil_abrams/status/1585657220099981312?s=20

@aaronjmate Nuland and Pyatt are not talking about replacing Yanukovych. They’re discussing a 1/25/14 proposal for a power-sharing deal, one which *Yanukovych himself* advanced, whereby he’d remain president alongside a new prime minister chosen from the opposition.

@aaronjmate (that's from a WaPo article entitled "Ukraine president says he’ll name rival as prime minister, but opposition demands more," in case you want to find it.)

@aaronjmate In the end, Yanukovych agreed to just such a deal which was brokered by the E.U. But before the ink was dry he clammed up like a wuss and fled to the safety of Putin's warm bosom. So the deal never took effect.

@aaronjmate Now for the last variation of the "coup" argument.

After Yanukovych fled, Ukraine’s parliament voted to formally remove him. The vote? 328-0. Russia apologists like Maté complain that the 328 votes amounted to only 73% of deputies, not the full 75% the constitution requires.

@aaronjmate “Illegal coup!” shriek the tankies, upon learning the vote to remove Yanukovych fell short by a whopping 2%.

In a functioning democracy, they’d have a point. But Ukraine was no longer a functioning democracy. And the blame for that lay squarely with Yanukovych.

@aaronjmate Though duly elected in 2010, Yanukovych, once in office, moved to unlawfully consolidate power in his hands. First, he packed the Constitutional Court. He then had his loyalists on the Court rubber-stamp into force a new constitution granting more powers to the president.

@aaronjmate Yanukovych also imprisoned and tried on trumped-up charges his main opponent from the 2010 election.

@aaronjmate Then, during the Euromaidan, Yanukovych further eviscerated his legitimacy by bloodying up the protesters and imposing new laws granting himself dictatorial powers. Yes, the protesters turned violent too, but mostly in response to Yanukovych’s repression.

@aaronjmate That the escalating protester violence was provoked by the regime's violence and repression is a fact accepted even by the relatively few scholars who believe that the far-right's role in the Euromaidan was more important than most believe.

@aaronjmate Here, for instance, is Serhiy Kudelia. It was the regime’s recalcitrance, he argues, combined with its brutal response to peaceful protests, that instigated the turn to violence and legitimized it in the eyes of the moderate, peaceful protesters, who made up the majority.

@aaronjmate Sorry, but complaints about Ukraine’s parliament failing to religiously follow constitutional procedure when it removed Yanukovych ring hollow when one considers Yanukovych’s far more egregious violations of the same constitution.

@aaronjmate Legitimacy isn’t about popularity but adherence to constitutional rules. Break the rules, lose your legitimacy.

What exactly are people like Maté trying to argue? That everyone else had a duty to adhere to the constitution even after Yanukovych had torn it to shreds? Please.

@aaronjmate Finally, we have the false-flag theory of Ivan Katchanovski, who argues that the Euromaidan's bloody climax, the "sniper's massacre," was carried out not by regime officials but by members of the far-right opposition in an attempt to falsely implicate the regime.

@aaronjmate Katchanovski makes this argument in a series of controversial papers, which most scholars don't accept. The problem is, there is lots of video footage available of actual regime snipers killing Maidan protesters.

@aaronjmate For instance, three of those killings are examined in an NYT article, which reviews the evidence compiled by SITU, a research lab in New York. Employing sophisticated open-source analysis, SITU shows that at least those three murders were committed by Berkut officers.

@aaronjmate So even if you accept Katchanovski's argument that far-right opposition members were responsible for some of the sniper killings, others were clearly committed by the security agencies allied with Yanukovych.

@aaronjmate The most you could argue, then, is that *both* the regime and opposition carried out killings that day, which means, yes, at least some of that blood is definitively on Yanukovych's hands. That kind of complicates the "Maidan coup" theory, doesn't it?

@aaronjmate In sum, the idea that the Euromaidan was a "coup," as Kremlin shills like Maté would have you believe, is downright silly. Every single strand of the thesis, in fact, is just blindingly stupid. The Euromaidan was a bona fide revolution, and no amount of gaslighting can deny it.