The Guardian
11 HN mentions · mentioned in 7 months, 2022–2025
1:20 · 84K views · Dec 16, 2013
A short Guardian clip of US Senator John McCain addressing protesters in Kiev's Independence Square in December 2013. He encourages them to continue peaceful protests for closer EU ties.
Cited in Ukraine and Russia threads as evidence of US involvement in the 2013-14 protests.
11 comments from Hacker News
You're having an anachronism. The events in Crimea only came after 'their president' was overthrown, and were directly and indisputably caused by it. The reason I say 'their president' is because Crimea is majority ethnic Russian and before them it was Tatars. It's never been Ukrainian in ethnicity or even close to such. And the event that was exploited into a crisis point was Yanukovych signing an economic agreement with Russia instead of the EU. The US wasn't just doings things behind the scenes. This [1] is John McCain at a rally in Kyiv. Imagine if during the BLM (or January 6th or whatever) protests/riots if China/Russia/etc had sent high level officials to overtly rally people to try to overthrow the government. It's a completely surreal sight if you really think about what you're seeing. The US is right there saying 'Yeah, we're gonna overthrow you in plain sight - try to do anything about it and you'll be wishing that's all that happened.' And if you think there was nothing going on behind the scenes on top of that stuff that overt in front of the cameras, then I'd say you're not arguing in good faith! In any case, none of this happens with good relations. A simple agreement to economically save Ukraine shouldn't have been an adversarial East vs West thing, but just another agreement to the benefit of Ukrainians. But that poor country's strategic positioning, and easily exploitable nationalist minority, means it was doomed to inevitably just end up as little more than
I don’t follow “Russian propaganda”, I think for myself. Every source I have shared with you is a mainstream Western source, including experts whose JOB it was to deliver analyses for their governments. If I lived in Russia, I’d be surrounded by Russian propaganda and also would have to cut through it like any independently-thinking person. If anything, I am constantly exposed to “US propaganda” since I live here, and it is a concerted effort to shut out anything that is even slightly away from the predetermined, official line, (in this case that the invasion is “unjustified and unprovoked”). After 9-11 it was going to be “Islamofascism” but that didn’t poll well, so they switched to “they hate us for our freedoms” and “weapons of mass destruction”. You can sometimes tell propaganda by how contrived the phrase is (eg “hacking the election”) and how it is repeated verbatim like it was normal and not contribed at all. In Russia it is “special military operation”. Everyone has propaganda. The attempt to label what half the world believes as “Russian Propaganda” is itseld a deligitimization tactic. Even within the most hawkish countries (like UK) there have been tons of voices clearly not on Russia’s payroll, but just as systematically ignored. This is a systemic problem: [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] The Israeli PM walked back No, that lame attempt by someone at Business Insider to try to spin it was already addressed in the Krystal Ball video I posted. Did you watch it? They argu
Well, a single person is going too far. Obviously there is diversity of thought throughout various cities. But having said that, yes I specifically mentioned Chernivtsi because it is in Western Ukraine and to show that I am acquainted with people who live there. Cities like Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi and Lviv are historically Polish Galicia, they really have had quite anti-Russian sentiment for a very long time. Even during Soviet times, the USA tried to reach them with Radio Liberty —- started by the CIA (bet you didn’t know that). People living there are the ones who hope the most that USA will come and help them escape having to deal with “the Russian-speaking world”. Many of them don’t like the Eastern Ukrainians, calling them “katsapy” as far back as 70 years ago. And the Russians — well, they are “Muscovites” while Ukrainians are the “true Russians” in their view. Again, this is not everyone but a prevailing sentiment. Just like with sunnis and shiites and kurds, it is a very convenient tinderbox for an outside power (the US, say) to come in and play one side against the other, just as they have done in many other countries. (And KGB used to do as well, eg with Palestinians in Israel/Jordan etc.) It is a playbook that predates the US by millennia. In the Bible, the Egyptians worried about Jews becoming numerous and siding with their enemies etc. Anyway, Wikipedia has a textbook entry on “proxy war” that literally describes it all: [LINK] A lot of far-right groups en
Apologies for the hoard of links here, but I think they're necessary. There's so much disinformation and misinformation on this topic that I want to emphasize everything I'm stating is accurate and can be verified easily. The motion you are mentioning was the Ukraine cabinet passing a resolution (in other words a statement of intent) to continue working towards an EU Association Agreement, the exact same sort they currently have with places such as Israel, Egypt, South Africa, Syria, and many other such nations. [1] That cabinet then chose to not pass any further acts that would have been necessary to move forward with said agreement. Instead it started moving towards the creation of a 3-way association agreement between Ukraine, the EU, and Russia that would help ensure trade could flow amongst all parties. [2] That's when you started getting protests, which quickly escalated into riots and insurrection efforts. And you then also get completely bizarre scenes like this [3]. That is John McCain in the capital of Ukraine, telling protesters that America is with them and that their future is with America and Europe. Imagine if you had something comparable during January 6th from comparably high level Chinese/Russian officials. It's not only completely surreal, but also understates the issue. Because this was effectively a superpower declaring war on the current establishment of a much weaker country, which is going to endlessly embolden insurrection efforts. As for merit, neith
Imagine this [1] scene playing out during one of the various protest come riot movements in the US over the past years. That is John McCain giving a speech to the protesters in the capitol of Ukraine, telling them that America is with them and that Europe will make Ukraine better. And to be clear he was doing this while the democratically elected [pro-Russian] president was still securely in office and would be for months to come. I feel like we largely lack any perspective because so many of things that are happening are something so completely foreign to us that it's difficult to even realistically imagine it. Imagine if Russia formed a 'defensive' military alliance whose primary mission was to contain the US. And they then gave speeches, such as McCain's, in Mexico City shortly before a pro-US Mexican government was overthrown by an insurrection and replaced with a pro-Russian one. And then they now moved to integrate the new Mexico into their military alliance which would undoubtedly result in 'defensive' weapons, arms, soldiers, etc being placed right along the US border - possibly to the point of imperiling our credible nuclear deterrent. I would certainly agree that Ukraine is not just a US pawn and wants to decide it's own fate, and deserves that. But there's also no doubt that it's political present and future is instead repeatedly decided by outside actors. [1] - this video