May 28: Serhii Antonov: War in Donbas 2014—Part 2

As published on May 24, 2023

Serhii Antonov: War in Donbas 2014—Part 2

I continue my story about the beginning of the war in Donbas. As in the previous thread, I will first describe a brief overview of events in Ukraine as a whole, for a better understanding of the situation.

In January 2014, the parliament of Ukraine, which was under the control of Yanukovych, adopted a number of laws that Ukrainians called dictatorial. These laws severely limited freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful protest. This was decided to finally introduce a dictatorship and try to destroy the protest movement.

This outraged Ukrainian society and caused large-scale clashes with the police, which became more and more frequent. This led to the first dead protesters.

Russian propaganda actively supported the Yanukovych regime, and Russia began to more actively finance the Ukrainian government with loans. Also, in order to put pressure on Ukrainian businessmen, Russia began to carefully check every Ukrainian product at its border on January 29, which in fact led to the blocking of imports. This and other factors caused more and more antipathy and indignation among the demonstrators towards Russia.

The government began to actively involve sportsmen-"titushki" to defeat the attack on the protesters. Also, these athletes pretended to be protesters and committed pogroms in Kyiv to discredit the protests. Real protesters united in groups to oppose the "titushki" and protect Kyiv from pogroms.

In the end, these confrontations ended with the defeat of the athletes in the center of Kyiv and a large-scale police attack on the protesters at the end of February. This confrontation lasted several days. On the first day, dozens of protesters and several policemen who started using firearms were killed. This caused a reaction in a number of regions, where opposition-minded citizens began storming the bodies of local councils and police stations where weapons were kept.

The situation got out of control of the government. Yanukovych fled first from Kyiv, and then from Ukraine. He was scared because he understood the anger of the armed Ukrainians who were being killed by his policemen.

The Parliament of Ukraine adopted a decision to remove Yanukovych from the post of President of Ukraine. 328 members of the current parliament voted for it. I would like to note that the mark of 300 votes of the parliament is called "constitutional majority" and gives the right to the parliament to change the constitution and vote to impeach the president. This is written in the constitution of Ukraine.

But the Ukrainian laws do not clearly prescribe the procedure for impeachment of the president and his removal. This is exactly what Russian propaganda refers to when it talks about a "coup" and non-recognition of the Ukrainian government. But propagandists are silent about more than 300 votes (constitutional majority) of the active and recognized parliament. Already in May 2014, democratic elections for a new president were held in Ukraine.

The video shows a farewell to protesters killed by Yanukovych's regime in the center of Kyiv.