DDP Newsletter Vol. XXXVII, No. 4
A color revolution is said to be a “mostly peaceful” anti-regime protest movement that may result in regime change. In its initial 14 years of independent existence, Ukraine has experienced two. In December 2004, The Atlantic called the Orange Revolution “a genuine outpouring of popular sentiment for freedom and justice,…a media-savvy revolution, almost like a democracy festival, aimed at winning the sympathy of Europeans and Americans” (https://tinyurl.com/2s4e8bhm).
Another view is that the term refers to CIA-led regime-change operations developed by RAND Corporation, “democracy” NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and other groups, according to journalist Gina Aveni (https://tinyurl.com/yn4j58ap). Brant Turbeville writes that these movements are the method by which “the destinies of seemingly independent nations are controlled by a world oligarchy” (https://tinyurl.com/3drrtar2).
Color revolutions, Turbeville states, may supplant or be combined with direct military action (Iraq, Afghanistan) or the “Brzezinski method” (death squads as in Libya) to destabilize governments. The wide participation of genuine local activists gives them the façade of a popular pro-democracy movement.
“The operation—engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience—is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections” (Guardian 11/25/2004, https://tinyurl.com/2p8exm7v).
Oliver Stone’s documentary Ukraine on Fire: Russian Aggression or American Interference? You Decide, banned from YouTube but available as a DVD and on Rumble (https://tinyurl.com/nhk57b84), describes the common features of money, media, and method in events in Georgia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Moldova, Venezuela, Lebanon, and elsewhere. Symbolism is critical; the clenched fist is ubiquitous. Funding sources include the U.S. and Dutch Embassies and George Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation.
The 2004 Ukraine protests followed a hotly contested election and runoff in which Viktor Yanukovych, who was favored by Vladimir Putin, was declared elected. But a second runoff after the protests resulted in victory for Viktor Yushchenko, whose U.S. State Department connections are noted by Stone. Yushchenko’s wife had worked in the White House. When his promised reforms did not occur, Yushchenko’s popularity quickly plummeted, and Yanukovych was elected in 2010.
One of Yanukovych’s first actions was to repeal the Hero of Ukraine award that Yushchenko had conferred on the Nazi collaborator and war criminal Stepan Bandera (https://tinyurl.com/bdf7sf8u), hero of the extremist battalions who were deeply involved in the 2014 Maidan putsch that ousted Yanukovych.
In his interview with Stone for the documentary, Yanukovych explained that the Maidan protests were initially peaceful but were infiltrated by provocateurs, including neo-Nazi extremists. U.S. officials—Victoria Nuland, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT)—appeared at the protest. Stone states that the U.S. Embassy appeared to be in charge of the process. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, and Vice President Joe Biden had had discussions about how to “restructure” the Ukrainian government. Three new television stations broadcast the events, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) helped make them go viral.
The pillars of a color revolution are (tinyurl.com/2e6pkwxs): 1) a semi-autocratic rather than fully autocratic regime; 2) an unpopular incumbent; 3) a united and organized opposition; 4) an ability quickly to drive home the point that voting results were falsified; 5) compliant independent media to inform citizens about the falsified vote; 6) a political opposition capable of mobilizing tens of thousands or more demonstrators to protest electoral fraud; and 7) divisions among the regime’s coercive forces (police and military).
Demonizing the target is crucial, Stone explains—as was done with Yanukovych and Putin. And what about Donald Trump?
In June 2020, former Secretary of State John Kerry warned of a revolution if Trump won the election (https://tinyurl.com/3vkeuxa4). “Cheat by mail” ballots might have had a dual purpose—to increase votes for Biden, or if Trump won, to discredit the results. “Allowing mail-in ballots to be counted as many as 6 days after the election [is] setting the stage so that Americans will doubt the outcome and Biden’s 600+ lawyers will contest the results anywhere possible to further this confusion,” writes Aveni.
The U.S. is not immune to color revolution tactics. “If you understand and see what is really happening across the nation then you know [Black Lives Matter] and Antifa are not reacting to Floyd or injustice of any kind. Thousands of these younger Americans are being used to topple the United States President and the Constitution,” Aveni states. The riots for some reason miraculously fizzled away after Biden was declared the winner.
AFTER 2014
Ukraine and Russia have been on a road to war since 2014, writes retired Swiss military-intelligence officer Jacques Baud. “The first legislative act of the new government resulting from the American-sponsored overthrow of [the democratically-elected] President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian an official language in Ukraine. A bit like if German putschists decided that French and Italian would no longer be official languages in Switzerland.”
This decision caused a storm in the Russian-speaking population, followed by fierce repression, with horrific massacres, most notably in Odessa and Mariupol. Over eight years, some 2 million Ukrainians from the Donbass region sought refuge in Russia. Ukrainian autonomists resisted, and the army subdued them without being able to prevail. The rebels were armed thanks to the defection of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units that went over to the rebel side. Tank, artillery, and anti-aircraft battalions swelled the ranks of the autonomists, pushing the Ukrainians to commit to the Minsk Agreements, which called for Kiev to negotiate an internal settlement with representatives of the republics seeking autonomy (not independence), but they were not implemented.
With the Ukrainian army in deplorable condition, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias. In 2020, they constituted about 40% of the Ukrainian forces and numbered about 102,000 men. They were armed, financed, and trained by the U.S., UK, Canada, and France. Even if one argues that the term “Nazi” is Russian propaganda, these militias are brutal, fanatical, and virulently anti-Semitic. The emblem of the Azov Regiment contains notorious Nazi symbols: the Wolfsangel (Wolf Hook) (tinyurl.com/4fkckupy) superimposed on the Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) (https://tinyurl.com/bdd8m9na).
So, Baud writes, “the West supported and continued to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous crimes against civilian populations since 2014: rape, torture and massacres” (https://tinyurl.com/4avm53eb). No sanctions, no press.