Talk:Revolution of Dignity

The article makes no reference to the US influence on this coup. Here are some sources for you to use which took me a matter of seconds to find.

https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea?s=08 - which contains several references and concludes: "It’s an overstatement to say, as some critics have charged, that Washington orchestrated the Maidan uprising. But there’s no doubt US officials backed and exploited it for their own ends."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26079957 The transcript of the infamous Nuland call, transcribed here with the following comment from the BBC diplomatic correspondent: "[T]his transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals. Russian spokesmen have insisted that the US is meddling in Ukraine's affairs - no more than Moscow, the cynic might say - but Washington clearly has its own game-plan. The clear purpose in leaking this conversation is to embarrass Washington and for audiences susceptible to Moscow's message to portray the US as interfering in Ukraine's domestic affairs." Although he takes pains here to insist that Russia is also involved in Ukraine and is intending to exploit the leaked phonecall, he is at least unbiased enough to admit the import of the call.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-ukraine-hypocrisy - which is quite extensive in its analysis. "The extent of the Obama administration’s meddling in Ukraine’s politics was breathtaking. [...] Nuland and Pyatt were engaged in such planning at a time when Yanukovych was still Ukraine’s lawful president. It was startling to have diplomatic representatives of a foreign country—and a country that routinely touts the need to respect democratic processes and the sovereignty of other nations—to be scheming about removing an elected government and replacing it with officials meriting U.S. approval. [...] Washington’s conduct not only constituted meddling, it bordered on micromanagement."

It situates US behaviour in the wider context of demonisation of Russia and the hypocrisy of the "reliable sources" that the article currently uses to the point of exclusion: "It was a grotesque distortion to portray the events in Ukraine as a purely indigenous, popular uprising. The Nuland-Pyatt telephone conversation and other actions confirm that the United States was considerably more than a passive observer to the turbulence. Instead, U.S. officials were blatantly meddling in Ukraine. Such conduct was utterly improper. The United States had no right to try to orchestrate political outcomes in another country—especially one on the border of another great power. It is no wonder that Russia reacted badly to the unconstitutional ouster of an elected, pro-Russian government—an ouster that occurred not only with Washington’s blessing, but apparently with its assistance."

https://www.jeffsachs.org/recorded-lectures/shw6yhjhpnbf8dpfnazyjywjwdjy5l The following speech by the troublesome Professor Sachs was given to the UN and perhaps needs some editing or paraphrasing before inclusion: "When the Maidan occurred, I was called soon after. “Professor Sachs, the new Ukrainian prime minister would like to see you to talk about the economic crisis.” So, I flew to Kyiv, and I was walked around the Maidan. And I was told how the US paid the money for all the people around the Maidan, the “spontaneous” revolution of dignity. Ladies and gentlemen, please, how did all those Ukrainian media outlets suddenly appear at the time of the Maidan? Where did all this organization come from? Where did all these buses come from? Where did all those people come from? Are you kidding? This is an organized effort. And it’s not a secret, except perhaps to citizens of Europe and the United States. Everyone else understands it quite clearly." He then characterises the events as a "coup".

https://css.cua.edu/ideas_and_commentary/the-american-mess-in-the-ukraine/ The writer above, who is absurdly dismissed out of hand for having used an AI search tool, referred to this academic source, which also refers to the action as a coup.

These sources are from across the political spectrum. If there are opinions given which counter these analyses of the Nuland call, then please include them in response to these voices (along with any responses to such responses, which I implore the editor to seek out if he has more than a fig leaf of credibility), but certainly you cannot leave these out or describe the sources as merely "unreliable" because they express an alternative view to the dominant viewpoint in English-language media. It is clear from the current state of the article that the editors are excluding these viewpoints due to their own bias, please do your work properly and put this bias aside now. Consider your responsibility to the website and not your personal viewpoints and agenda. Thank you. ~2026-14801-70 (talk) 21:04, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

On the placement within the article, it is absolutely absurd and an embarrassment for Wikipedia as a store of knowledge that the Nuland call is included under "Russian involvement"; "Russian propaganda". It is clear from the sources above that it is not solely "Russian propaganda" to describe the events as a coup, and it is blatant propaganda itself to include clear information about US involvement under the heading "Russian involvement". Namely, I point you to the BBC source above which draws an equivalence between US and Russian involvement even as it attempts the same distraction tactic used here. Your contextualisation of the Nuland call provides nothing other than a US government source, coupled with an academic whose apparent anti-Russia bias and support for the regime change operation is not mentioned. This is an entirely one-sided and biased presentation of the facts.

It is a simple fact that any attempts by Russia to "propagandise" with the call are secondary at best -- really entirely incidental -- and the call, and the US involvement in the overthrow of the democratically elected president, is the question of primary significance.

Could we get a mention of Nuland handing out cookies to protestors as well? Thank you. ~2026-14801-70 (talk) 21:16, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Why are we making a new section for this? Can we please keep this in one section? Your sources are a mixture of unreliable posts (like Sachs' blog post and the Cato piece which can't even spell Pyatt's name correctly) and sources that don't support the claim (BBC says nothing about a coup).

The call was about the offer by Yanukovych for cabinet positions, as every serious source has stated and is overwhelmingly clear from the transcript and timing of the call (which took place less than a couple hours after the announcement, a rather absurd coincidence if it was about a coup).

"Nuland discussed President Viktor Yanukovych’s Jan. 25 offer of the prime minister’s job to Arseniy Yatseniuk, leader of the opposition Batkivshchyna Party."

"The four-minute conversation was about a Jan. 25 offer by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich to two opposition leaders, who want him to sign the EU deal, to become prime minister and deputy prime minister."

"The two were discussing Mr. Yanukovych’s offer to bring two opposition leaders, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko, into the government as prime minister and deputy prime minister."

"In the recorded call, Ms. Nuland and the ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, were talking about an offer made on Jan. 25 by Mr. Yanukovych to bring two opposition leaders, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko, into the government as prime minister and deputy prime minister, respectively."

"In the phone call, Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador in Kiev, are discussing the planned government reshuffle that would see Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Vitaly Klitschko, two opposition leaders, take the roles of prime minister and deputy prime minister respectively."

"In the tapes, Nuland and Pyatt discuss the upheavals in Ukraine, and President Viktor Yanukovych’s offer last month to make opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk the new prime minister and Vitali Klitschko deputy prime minister. Both men turned the offer down."

Same is true of serious academics. For example, Paul D’Anieri in "Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War" said the call showed "US support for a deal that kept Yanukovych in power" and Timothy Snyder said "And in the context of the time, what that telephone conversation showed was that the Americans were, A, not up to date about what was happening in Ukraine and, B, unable to influence events happening in Ukraine, because at that time, as opposed to weeks later, what was being discussed in that phone call was an offer by the then-president of Ukraine to Klitschko and to Yatsenyuk, which they refused. The Americans were telling them to accept it, and they refused it."

There is also the released email from Christopher Smith in "Ukraine's Revolt, Russia's Revenge" which confirms this interpretation. Indeed, the evidence is so clear and the reporting so overwhelming on this that it's a pretty good sign that a source is not remotely reliable if they take the position that it was about a coup. LordCollaboration (talk) 23:05, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

In this context Nuland and Pyatt discussed their preferences for Yatsenyuk and Klitschko going into a government under a president Yanukovych. This would have kept Yanukovych in power.

Ukraine's embattled president, Viktor Yanukovych, on Saturday night made a surprising and wide-ranging compromise offer to the protesters who have occupied his capital, promising to make an opposition leader prime minister, give amnesty to those involved in clashes with police and institute major constitutional reforms. The trio of politicians who have become the de facto leaders of the protests rejected the offer but said they were willing to negotiate. After several hours of discussions on Saturday, it was announced that Yanukovych had offered the prime minister's job to Arseny Yatsenyuk, of jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko's Fatherland party. He also offered a deputy prime minister post to Vitali Klitschko, a former heavyweight boxer, and promised public debates with him.^[1]

To the casual listener, the eavesdropped call between Nuland and Pyatt sounded like evidence of a conspiracy in which American officials were designating ministers in a future Ukrainian government while insulting their European partners. But placed into the context of events, the conversation was far less sensational. In late January, after the first killings on the Maidan, the opposition leaders Yatsenyuk, Klitschko, and Oleh Tyahnybok held a series of talks with Yanukovych. The Ukrainian president offered a number of concessions, including making Yatsenyuk prime minister and Klitschko deputy prime minister, in return for an end to the protests. The political constellation that Nuland and Pyatt could be heard discussing would have kept Yanukovych in power, and in the end, the opposition rejected the offer, seeing in it a poisoned chalice designed to split the Maidan. As for Nuland’s crude remark about the EU, it concisely, if undiplomatically, expressed American frustration with the Europeans’ reluctance to threaten Yanukovych with sanctions if he did not end the violence.^[2]

When Yanukovych, in January 2014, sought a compromise that would bring leaders of opposition parties into the government, the United States strove to get the opposition leaders to go along and was trying to bring in others, including the UN, to encourage this. The United States hoped that Arseniy Yatseniuk, rather than Vitaliy Klitschko, would become the new prime minister, apparently due to Yatseniuk’s greater economic expertise. It also wanted to keep the far-right Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok out of the government. Details of the US position were leaked (presumably by Russia) from a cell phone conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. This was much the same deal that the EU foreign ministers sought to negotiate with Yanukovych after the February 18 violence. Despite Nuland’s expletive-laden complaints about the EU, and the tiff that her outburst provoked, the European Union and United States were advancing compatible positions that would have kept Yanukovych in power.^[3]

A phone call leaked in early February, where Nuland and US Ambassador Pyatt discuss preference for Yatseniuk over the other leaders of the opposition, Klitchko and Tyahnybok, to join a new Yanukovych cabinet on account of Yatseniuk’s perceived stronger economic and governing experience, shows American endorsement of Yanukovych’s continued rule, not a plan to end it.^[4]

Jo1971 (talk) 23:16, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

All above is a weak selection of the sources i.e of politically correct sources - in the line of Western propaganda narratives against Russia for over last three decades. Leading Western intelectuals, political scientists, and economists

like N. Comsky, R. Wolff, J. Mearsheimer, J. Sachs are not visigle in the article. In this article Chinese or Russian analysts are ignored too ~2026-17554-22 (talk) 11:28, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

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Wanteed to flag what I see as a NPOV issue with the current framing of the "Russian propaganda" subsection, and propose some changes. The current structure presents the question of US/Western involvement primarily as only a Russian disinformation narrative. Framing the broader question of Western involvement under that header conflates two distinct things: (1) the false Russian state narrative, and (2) a real academic discussion in mainstream Western scholarship about the role of US/Western democracy-promotion activities in post-Soviet states. Some examples of the latter that I think the current framing doesn't adequately account for: William C. Wohlforth (Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth, former editor of Security Studies) and Jill Kastner, in A Measure Short of War (Oxford University Press, 2025), discuss post-Cold War Western democracy promotion in the context of great-power subversion, naming the 2004 Color Revolution in Ukraine. Their framing is not that it "was a coup" but that, from Moscow's perspective, NGO-led democracy assistance "looked like subversion." Summary in Harvard GSAS Colloquy, March 2026: https://gsas.harvard.edu/news/measure-short-war John Mearsheimer's "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault" in Foreign Affairs (September/October 2014) explicitly states "it is clear that Washington backed the coup" with reference to the Nuland-Pyatt call. Not saying that's universally agreed upon, but Foreign Affairs is a top-tier publication and Mearsheimer's view is widely cited in academic IR literature. Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia, longtime advisor to post-Soviet governments) has repeatedly characterized the 2014 events as a US-backed coup, though primarily in op-eds. The articles shouldnt adopt these views instead or treat them as equally weighted with the mainstream specialist literature (D'Anieri, Popova & Shevel, etc.), which I recognize is the dominant view in Ukraine area studies. But per WP:NPOV and WP:YESPOV, significant academic minority views should be acknowledged, and the current header presupposes that all claims of US/Western involvement reduce to Russian propaganda, which is inaccurate. Proposal: Rename the subsection from "Russian propaganda" to something more neutral, e.g., "Allegations of foreign involvement" or "International reception and contested framings." Add a sentence acknowledging that some serious Western scholarship (peer-reviewed, not Russian-state-aligned) has discussed Western involvement in post-Soviet political transitions in non-propagandistic terms, specificallyt including the Maidan revolution, while making clear this remains a minority view in Ukraine specialist literature. Continue to include the existing material on Russian state media's actual disinformation claims, which are correctly identified as such. ScottDNelson (talk) 21:16, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Your first example does not appear to be about Maidan. And your third example, Sachs, is not reliable or serious on this topic. I don't think we should remove the propaganda label based on a tiny number of serious scholars disagreeing, it is fringe and does not qualify as a significant minority view. The overwhelming consensus is that the Nuland-Pyatt call was about Yanukovych's offer of cabinet positions and that Maidan was self-organized and led. LordCollaboration (talk) 21:48, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

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Thanks for the quick response, a few thoughts that need attention: On Wohlforth/Kastner: You're right that the Harvard summary names the 2004 Orange Revolution rather than 2014 Maidan specifically, and I should have been more precise. The broader academic point that Western post-Cold War democracy promotion is a topic mainstream IR scholarship treats as contested rather than purely as Russian propaganda still stands, and the source supports that broader point even if not 2014 specifically. On Mearsheimer: You didn't address this. John Mearsheimer's "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault" in Foreign Affairs (Sept/Oct 2014) directly states "it is clear that Washington backed the coup" and cites the Nuland–Pyatt call by name. Foreign Affairs is among the most-cited foreign policy journals in the English-speaking world; Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and one of the most-cited living IR scholars. This is on-point for both 2014 and Nuland, peer-edited at a top journal, by a senior chaired professor at a major research university. By any standard reading of WP:RS and WP:DUE, that is not "fringe" and not a "tiny number." On the "fringe" framing more broadly: WP:FRINGE is a specific policy term referring to views that depart from mainstream academic discourse. A view published in Foreign Affairs by a chaired professor at Chicago does not meet that bar regardless of how strongly other scholars disagree with it. The fact that the dominant view in Ukraine area-studies scholarship is different from Mearsheimer's view is exactly the kind of legitimate intra-academic disagreement that WP:NPOV and WP:YESPOV direct us to acknowledge, not to characterize as propaganda. On Sachs: I stated in my original post that Sachs's statements are primarily in op-eds rather than peer-reviewed work. Per WP:RSOPINION, op-eds are reliable sources for the author's own opinions, which is what's at issue here, not whether Sachs is establishing a contested factual claim, but whether a credentialed Western academic at a major university (Columbia, longtime advisor to post-Soviet governments including Ukraine in the 1990s) holds and has publicly stated a view that the events were a US-backed coup. That he holds the view is well documented. Whether to cite him is a separate question. The core procedural issue: Naming a section "Russian propaganda" in Wikipedia's own voice characterizes claims as propaganda before the body of the section establishes it. Per WP:WIKIVOICE, characterizations like that need to be attributed to sources, not asserted by the encyclopedia. This is true regardless of how the broader content debate resolves. ~~~~ ScottDNelson (talk) 22:11, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Is this written with AI? I don't want to discuss with an LLM. On Wohlforth/Kastner, if they do not reference Maidan, as appears to be the case, then this is original research. On Mearsheimer, I did address it, you (or an AI) just disagree that this constitutes a tiny number of disagreement. On Sachs, many people credible in some topics are not credible on others. He is not a specialist or recognized expert on this topic. See WP:RSEDITORIAL. And there is no procedural issue here, the section title should be supported by a well-referenced body, it does not need (nor should have) citations itself. LordCollaboration (talk) 22:42, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

@ScottDNelson: 1) WP:TL;DR. 2) WP follows consensus of WP:RS and neutrality means neutrally reporting what RS say. Rsk6400 (talk) 06:36, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

@LordCollaboration In regards to the LLM concern, I want to be transparent: the research, views & comments came from me, I did use an LLM to help me with structure and wording (since it helps my writing style) - apologies I wasn't aware of the policy as it pertains to talk page comments. Will keep that in mind going forward, but just wanted to clarify I personally reviewed each source I cited, and these points were coming from me directly.

I see what you're saying about Mearsheimer, although given he is: highly established at the University of Chicago, one of the most-cited IR scholars, and the source quoting him is from Foreign Affairs (a respected journal on international affairs), that seems worthwhile to include. At that point don't those institutions & journals give his thoughts on the matter weight here as well? In any case, even if we consider it 'fringe', re-revieiwng Wikipedia's guidance on fringe theories doesn't this recommend including his position, as long as it's in included with the larger context of the propoganda framing? Clearly contextualizing it as a minority view, without giving it 'undue' weight of course. ScottDNelson (talk) 19:05, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

One against one hundred is fringe, no matter his past merits. For the rest: You'd need a source saying what you want to include. And please remember to be concise. Rsk6400 (talk) 19:35, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Hey @Rsk6400, happy to specify the source and text; and will try to be concise as I can.

I propose adding: A minority view in international relations scholarship has described the events as backed by the US. John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, stated in Foreign Affairs "Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup".

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20150730190555/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukraine-crisis-west-s-fault ScottDNelson (talk) 20:01, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

The problem is that this is option and not an academic article and it has tonnes of factual mistakes. The big one being that NATO and russia never agreed that nato wouldn't expand, and Ukraine isn't being offered NATO membership... Both of which are the foundation of his argument. —blindlynx 20:59, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

a brief overview —blindlynx 13:13, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

The source doesn't say that this is a "minority view". This is a time sink. Rsk6400 (talk) 05:43, 9 May 2026 (UTC)