Twenty years on… how the U.S.-backed Orange Revolution set Ukraine on the path to war with Russia

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from Strategic Culture:

U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated this week for a second non-consecutive term in the White House, and among a whirlwind of executive orders, he highlighted that ending the conflict in Ukraine would be a priority for his administration.

He may not achieve a resolution within 24 hours as he had promised during his election campaign, but he is showing a welcome preparedness to try.

Fair play to Trump. At least, he is willing to engage diplomatically with Russia – unlike his predecessor, Joe Biden, and Democrat presidential contender Kamala Harris. The Biden administration recklessly escalated the war in Ukraine to the point where a disastrous nuclear confrontation with Russia was greatly at risk. Unlike the Washington establishment, Trump is not encumbered with an insulting attitude toward Russian President Vladimir Putin or the Russian people.

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However, if Trump is serious about ending the three-year war in Ukraine, then his administration will need to show an understanding of the roots of the conflict. Admittedly, such an understanding might be a big ask given the type of hawkish figures in Trump’s cabinet and the abundance of historically illiterate Russophobes in Washington.

This week marked another presidential inauguration. Twenty years ago, on January 23, 2005, Viktor Yushchenko became president of Ukraine on the back of the U.S.-sponsored Orange Revolution. This article by Odessa-born journalist Petr Lavrenin provides a detailed overview of the events and sinister consequences. Consequences that led to the present conflict in Ukraine and the potentially catastrophic tensions between the United States and Russia.

That Ukrainian election two decades ago was just one of several so-called color revolutions in the former Soviet Union countries where U.S. finance and intelligence were deployed covertly to win elections for pro-Western parties, thereby making trouble for neighboring Russia.

Ukraine was always a prized target for U.S. imperialism to turn it into a cat’s paw against Russia, as Cold War strategists like Zbigniew Brzezinski had keenly recommended.

The forerunner of events in Ukraine was the Rose Revolution in 2003 in Georgia. The Western-backed candidate Mikhail Saakashvili won power and immediately oriented the former Soviet republic towards the European Union and NATO. That color revolution is still playing out today where Western-backed opposition parties are contesting the election of the Georgian Dream party at the end of last year, whose victory was based on a platform of seeking friendlier relations with Russia.

In a similar pattern of foreign interference, the Ukrainian presidential election in 2004 was won by pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovich. The result was thrown into controversy by the U.S.-backed Orange Revolution mobilized to support rival Viktor Yushchenko. Purportedly, civic society groups financed by U.S. American International Development (USAID, a well-known front for CIA funding) and billionaire pro-Western investor George Soros pitched tents and occupied government buildings in Kiev until the Western-backed candidate Yushchenko won the day through public disturbances and a subsequent election run-off. There is a clear echo of the tactics in Georgia today to overturn the election of the Dream party.

As Lavrenin’s article makes clear, the inauguration of Yushchenko was a fateful turning point for Ukraine. The new president emerged to be something of an imposter, implementing controversial policies that were divisive and inflammatory. The former central banker promptly turned the country into an enemy of Russia. He shed his previous image of a moderate and unifier to embark on policies of polarizing and alienating large sections of Ukrainian society. (Echoes of incumbent expired president Zelensky who reneged on his peace campaign after his election in 2019.)

With Yushchenko’s dubious rise to power, there then followed a years-long program of repressing Russian culture and language, glorifying Nazi collaborators, and orientating Ukraine for NATO and EU membership.

Yushchenko’s policies caused his popularity to plummet. He eventually lost the presidential election in 2010 to his former rival Viktor Yanukovich.

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