foreign NGOs changed little about Ukraine’s corruption and authoritarianism, but achieved the crucial goal of nudging Ukraine’s foreign policy westward. As the liberal Center for American Progress put it that year:
Did Americans meddle in the internal affairs of Ukraine? Yes. The American agents of influence would prefer different language to describe their activities — democratic assistance, democracy promotion, civil society support, etc. — but their work, however labeled, seeks to influence political change in Ukraine.
US officials, unhappy with the scuttled EU deal, saw a similar chance in the Maidan protests. Just two months before they broke out, the NED’s then president, pointing to Yanukovych’s European outreach, wrote that “the opportunities are considerable, and there are important ways Washington could help.” In practice, this meant funding groups like New Citizen, which the Financial Times reported “played a big role in getting the protest up and running,” led by a pro-EU opposition figure. Journalist Mark Ames discovered the organization had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from US democracy promotion initiatives.
While it may be a long time before we know its full extent, Washington took an even more direct role once the turmoil started. Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy met with Svoboda’s fascist leader, standing shoulder to shoulder with him as they announced their support to the protesters, while US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland handed out sandwiches to them. To understand the provocative nature of such moves, you only need to remember the establishment outrage over the mere idea Moscow had used troll farms to voice support for Black Lives Matter protests.
Later, a leaked phone call showed Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine maneuvering to shape the post-Maidan government. “
https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea
Maidan Revolution remains a messy event that isn’t easy to categorize but is far from what Western audiences have been led to believe. It’s a story of liberal, pro-Western protesters, driven by legitimate grievances but largely drawn from only one-half of a polarized country, entering a temporary marriage of convenience with the far right to carry out an insurrection against a corrupt, authoritarian president. The tragedy is that it served largely to empower literal neo-Nazis while enacting only the goals of the Western powers that opportunistically lent their support — among which was the geopolitical equivalent of a predatory payday loan.
It’s a story tragically common in post–Cold War Europe, of a country maimed and torn apart when its political and social divisions were used and wrenched further apart in the tussle of great power rivalry. And the Western failure to understand it has led us to a point where Washington continues to recklessly involve itself in a place full of shadowy motives, shifting allegiances, and where little is what it seems on the surface.
Western involvement helped bring the country to this crisis. There’s little reason to think it’ll now get it out.