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Written by Gavin O’Reilly
In 2013, Ukraine found itself at a crossroads. The former Soviet Republic was in dire financial straits, and had been offered the opportunity to sign an association agreement with the European Union. This would have fostered political and economic ties between Kiev and Brussels, and been an incremental step towards Ukraine becoming a full-member of the bloc.
Ukraine’s Baltic neighbours Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia had all become EU members in 2004, and had also joined NATO in the same year. Ukraine becoming an EU member would have resulted in a political, and potentially military, encirclement of Russia along its western border.
As well as the security risks posed by the association agreement, the ethnic makeup of Ukraine was also a factor. The east of the country was composed primarily of ethnic Russians. This included the Crimean Peninsula which was originally Russian territory, but ceded to Ukraine during the Soviet-era. The eastern Donbass region, comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, also had a majority ethnic Russian population. Taking these factors into account, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych suspended the association agreement in November Protests swept the former Soviet Republic in response.
Though these demonstrations were framed by the European media as an organic response to government corruption, it soon became apparent that external influence was at play. Less than two months prior to Yanukovych’s suspension of the EU agreement, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US NGO that effectively acts as a privatised version of the CIA, published an op-ed in The Washington Post calling for Ukraine to distance itself from Russia.
Victoria Nuland
Within weeks of the unrest beginning in Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, then the US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, appeared in Kiev, where she infamously handed out cookies to demonstrators in the city’s Maidan Square. The same location saw a speech by US Senator John McCain days later. The Ukrainian protests were dubbed Euromaidan as a result.
John McCain
In February 2014, Yanukovych stepped down as a result of the protests, though Ukraine was still beset by instability. Amidst a wave of anti-Russian sentiment that had swept the country, Crimea voted to re-unify with Russia that March, and Donetsk and Luhansk broke away to form independent republics in April. The new EU-backed government of Petro Poroshenko declared war on the Donbass in response.
Fighting would occur until September that year, when a tentative ceasefire agreement was signed in Minsk. This collapsed in January 2015, before another agreement was signed that February. The Minsk Accords offered a straightforward solution to the conflict wherein Donetsk and Luhansk would remain under Ukrainian rule, but would be granted a degree of autonomy by Kiev.
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The EU however, sought to scupper the deal. In December 2022, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted in an interview with Die Zeit that negotiations had deliberately been stalled so as to give Ukraine time to build itself up militarily. Thousands would die as a result of he Donbass conflict, ultimately leading to another escalation.
On the 24th of February 2022, Russia launched a military intervention into Ukraine. This was to defend Russian minorities in eastern Ukraine, and to destroy any military infrastructure that would have potentially been used against Russia. Despite the operation being an escalation of an existing conflict, rather than the beginning of a new one, the European media establishment saw differently.
Within hours of the launch of the Russian intervention, outlets throughout Europe were adorned with headlines of an ‘unprovoked invasion’. This promoted a narrative that the war had begun that day, and Moscow had decided to attack its neighbour on an imperial whim. Though the war had actually begun in 2014, the conflict had received little press attention in Europe, despite it taking place on the EU’s doorstep. In order to ensure that European audiences remained in the dark on the underlying causes of the conflict, the EU also began to censor Russian media.
In early March 2022, the EU suspended the broadcasting licences of RT and Sputnik. These were two of the largest Russian media outlets available to Europe, and their censorship ensured that EU audiences would be left with an unbalanced portrayal of the conflict. The EU censored even more outlets earlier this year that had been covering the root causes of the Ukrainian conflict, SouthFront included.
As well as giving EU audiences an inaccurate portrayal of the war, European media also began lionising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. A relative unknown in the West prior to 2022, Zelenskyy was rapidly propelled to media darling-status following the Russian intervention. Regularly appearing in his trademark khakis, an image of a wartime President, leading from the frontlines, was carefully cultivated by the European media establishment.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy
This, in turn, was used to continue support for Ukraine’s war effort. On Tuesday, Zelenskyy paid his first official visit to Ireland, where Taoiseach Micheál Martin pledged €125mn as part of an Irish-Ukrainian partnership agreement. This was despite the fact that the south of Ireland is an ostensibly neutral state.
Though the war in Ukraine began in 2014, the European media establishment has only given it substantial coverage since 2022. This has been a one-sided affair that portrays Ukraine as bravely fighting against an unprovoked Russian invasion, ignoring the causes of the conflict.
The aim is to encourage continued military and financial support for Ukraine, and ultimately expand the EU to Russia’s borders. Even at the cost of a nuclear war.
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povo ucraniano é burro? o que os americanos tinham a oferecer a não ser bolachas? e ainda aplaudiam a victoria nuland nazista. povo idiota. ou voltam pra rússia ou vão pagar com a vida quererem seguir os estados unidos.