How Ukraine's Fake Culture War Became a Real Geopolitical Conflict

Part one of a series where I try to figure out why Russia invaded Ukraine. The outline for the series will go something like this Part One: A history of Ukraine before the war, and how its incredibly Byzantine politics accidently sucked in its paranoid neighbor. Part Two: A history of Russia's war on Ukraine from 2014 to the escalation in 2022, and how it ended up sparking a new Cold War. Part Three: A survey of all the popular theories of why Russia invaded Ukraine and why they're wrong, and a history of American foreign policy in Eastern Europe, especially NATO expansion. Part Four: The incredibly stupid and insane story of a fringe political sect and how it connects to both the war and a lot of other terrible things that have happened in the last 10 years. Follow Me @ https://www.twitter.com/afran90 Patronize Me @ https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2646842 0. Yep, This is the right place. The footnotes also have footnotes, which can be found in the pinned comment. (A) 1. For more about the 90s in Ukraine see Åslund, Anders. How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy. Illustrated, Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2009.(B) and Taras Kuzio (2007) Oligarchs, Tapes and Oranges: ‘Kuchmagate’ to the Orange Revolution, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13523270701194839 I should note there is one major difference between Ukraine and the typical post-Soviet story: Whereas most Eastern European coutries embarked on a program of "Shock Therapy," Ukraine's transition from socialism to capitalism was extremely gradual.(C) It was, in fact, quite fashionable among neoliberal economists to point to Ukraine's relatively anemic growht as proof that they were right about Shock Therapy, and the negative effects of Shock Therapy on Russia and Poland represented the best of a set of bad options. You don't hear that argument so often now. 2. Audio of the released section of the tapes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElVGjMmn5NM Transcript of gongadze threats https://www.rferl.org/a/1057789.html Story about sales to Iraq https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/special-report-kuchma-approved-sale-of-weapons-system-to-iraq/ 3. Åslund, A 2009 p. 129-139 4. Åslund, A 2009, p. 145 5. It's worth quoting Åslund here, because the story is funny: "Kuchma courted NATO by all means. In May 2002, he announced that Ukraine's ultimate goal was to join NATO. In November 2002, NATO held a summit in Prague, which Kuchma gate-crashed despite NATO having made clear that it did not invite him. 6. Åslund, A 2009, p. 180-185 7. The Testimony of Viktor Yushchenko for the George W. Bush Presidential Library's "Freedom Collection" contains numerous examples of fraud schemes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdqavNccy-I 8. More "Freedom Collection" testimony detailing the negotiations between Yushchenko, the security services and Kuchma. (D) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQVWcMJpFng 9. Åslund, A 2009 p. 106-112 10. Taras Kuzio (2012) Yushchenko versus Tymoshenko: Why Ukraine’s National Democrats Are Divide p. 201-228 https://demokratizatsiya.pub/archives/21_2_45116502502196T3.pdf 11. https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2011/11/9/6742106/ https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2010/07/29/5262151/ 12. Piece about the West's backlash to Tymoshenko's imprisonment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNYAUTqZWio 13. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/exclusive-how-ukraine-wooed-conservative-websites 14. A Full transcript of the memo Glazyev wrote to the Kremlin can be found linked here. While Glazyev denies writing the memo, he did admit it came from the Kremlin and it bears several own eccentric ideological idees fixes. https://zn.ua/ukr/internal/o-komplekse-mer-po-vovlecheniyu-ukrainy-v-evraziyskiy-integracionnyy-process-_.html 15. Article detailing the sanctions Russia put in place beginning in the summer of 2013. https://www.economist.com/europe/2013/08/24/trading-insults 16. Der Spiegel put out a very detailed expose of how the negotiations broke down between Yanukovych and the EU from the point of view of the EU. https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/war-in-ukraine-a-result-of-misunderstandings-between-europe-and-russia-a-1004706-amp.html 17. https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2011-07-05/svoboda-party-new-phenomenon-ukrainian-right-wing-scene 18. Sumary of the provisions of the protest law. https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/politics/2014/01/140116_rada_law_rights_vc 19. The pattern of the east only getting involved after the anti-protest laws can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan#Protests_across_Ukraine 20. A memo leaked during the Donbas war from an agent in Kyiv to the Kremlin, shows the thinking.(E) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/world/europe/russia-ukraine-crimea-annexation.html?_r=0 Footnotes continue into pined comments...