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This article was first published by Truthmeter.mk (North Macedonia), within the framework of Western Balkans Anti-Disinformation Project.
Macedonian media outlets reported the article “Sadly, Trump is right on Ukraine” by Alan Kuperman, and although he holds a doctorate in political science, the article exudes banal Kremlin propaganda narratives we’ve been hearing for the past 11 years
Author: Vangel Bashevski
After Donald Trump came to power, public discourse in the United States has degraded, and the factual accuracy of what is being said is no longer taken into account. Trump claimed that Volodymyr Zelensky is a “dictator without elections,” and such Russian disinformation is also being spread by diplomat Richard Grenell and journalist Tucker Carlson, and even a doctor of political science and university assistant professor, Alan Kuperman, from whom we would expect a bit more restraint.
Off.net.mk published his article, so let’s analyze it using the original in English, since Off.net.mk made some omissions and errors in their translation.
About the Euromaidan protests
Kuperman first addresses the protests in Ukraine, known as Euromaidan, and says:
First, as recently documented by overwhelming forensic evidence, and affirmed even by a Kyiv court, it was Ukrainian right-wing militants who started the violence in 2014 that provoked Russia’s initial invasion of the country’s southeast including Crimea. Back then, Ukraine had a pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych, who had won free and fair elections…
Pro-western activists responded with mainly peaceful occupation of the capital’s Maidan square and government offices, until the president eventually offered substantial concessions in mid-February 2014, after which they mainly withdrew.
Kuperman’s claims are largely inaccurate and are based on a conspiracy theory by Canadian-Ukrainian professor Ivan Katchanowski, who has been heavily promoted by the Russian propaganda outlet RT. He focuses on the bloodiest date of the protests, February 20, 2014, when, according to Katchanowski, anti-government snipers fired on both police and protesters, with the aim of escalating the crisis and defaming Viktor Yanukovych.
Kachanovsky and Kuperman are political scientists, not forensic scientists, and they support this theory with a verdict of the Sviatoshynskyi Court in Kyiv from October 18, 2023, but it is not about any right-wing militants, but about police officers from the Berkut unit, who fired on the protests. Indeed, the defense proved that there was also shooting by some oppositionists, but the court assessed it as a legitimate uprising for the following reasons.
Under Russia’s dictate, Yanukovych broke his promise of Ukraine’s European integration, but also used other moves to turn it into a kind of Russian colony under his authoritarian rule (see: here, here, here, and here), so on November 21, 2013, the Euromaidan began.
With rare exceptions, it was initially peaceful, and the government recruited provocateurs (so-called Titushky), so it was not clear who was responsible for those exceptions. On November 30, 2013, Euromaidan was brutally broken up, which created defiance and more massive gatherings in the following period.
On 22.12.2013, police brutality claimed its first victim, Pavlo Mazurenko. Later, other murders, torture, disappearances, etc. followed. On 16.1.2014, the so-called “Dictatorship Law” was introduced, which draconianly limited the right to protest, and on 19.1.2014, the Euromaidan turned violent.
Police officers also died in the riots, but mainly in the final phase of Euromaidan, which began on February 18, 2014. But, as we have pointed out, the government was the first to get its hands bloody, not the protesters.
Yanukovych made some concessions (amnesty and repeal of some draconian laws), but did not solve the problems that started the Euromaidan, and trust in Yanukovych was already lost. On February 21, 2014, he signed an agreement with the opposition to end the crisis, but he did not honor it.
In the end, Yanukovych was not overthrown, but fled Kyiv, and on February 22, 2014, he was dismissed by parliamentary procedure (not ideal, but still a procedure), which was voted for by legitimately elected deputies from the 2012 elections, including 36 of his party members.
Events in Crimea and Donbas
Euromaidan was followed by the events in Crimea and Donbas, about which Kuperman says:
Putin responded by deploying troops to Crimea and weapons to the southeast Donbas region on behalf of ethnic Russians who felt their president had been undemocratically overthrown.
Presidents come and go, so that is no justification for invasion and secession. There was no genocide of ethnic Russians here, and it is unclear why Kuperman emphasizes them in the text–according to the last census in 2001, they are not a majority in southeastern Ukraine, except in Crimea, but not overwhelmingly. And, there is no evidence that Russia has widespread support there, while referendums under occupation are null and void and rejected by the UN (here and here).
The thesis that Russia was helping Russians in Ukraine, who were wronged by the “overthrow” of Yanukovych, is not true. Some pro-Russian politicians in Crimea were considering assistance from Russia as early as February 4, 2014, when Yanukovych was in power. They were concerned about preserving Crimea’s autonomy within Ukraine, but Ukraine never revoked it.
They first mentioned a possible annexation to Russia on February 19, 2014, but even then Yanukovych was in power. However, there was no clear determination for secession.
Russia solved that for them with its invasion of Crimea, but there is confusion about when exactly the invasion began. The Russian medal “For the Return of Crimea” dates it to February 20, 2014, but Yanukovych was still in power at that time, so it turns out that Russia intervened militarily against him.
The confusion was fueled by Vladimir Putin, who denied sending troops and falsely described them as “local rebels.” They also secretly intervened in Donbas, on behalf of the so-called DPR and LPR, which were the creations of Russian agents such as Igor Girkin-Strelkov and Alexander Borodai.
The Minsk Peace Accords and NATO
Kuperman also speaks about the peace agreements Minsk 1 (5.9.2014) and Minsk 2 (12.2.2015):
Zelensky contributed to a wider war by violating peace deals with Russia and seeking NATO military aid and membership.
Ukraine was to guarantee Donbas limited political autonomy by the end of 2015, which Putin believed would be sufficient to prevent Ukraine from joining—or serving as a military base for—NATO.
With the invasion of Crimea in February 2014, Russia violated all international norms, including the Budapest Memorandum, so Kuperman has no right to complain that Ukraine violated anything, while Russian troops also secretly intervened in the Donbas war.
They won the battle for the city of Ilovaysk, while Minsk 1 was imposed on Ukraine. It envisaged self-government within Ukraine for part of the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast (for the DNR and LNR), for which Ukraine passed an appropriate law. However, elections were to be held in the DNR and LNR in accordance with the laws of Ukraine, which the DNR and LNR violated with their own “elections” without OSCE monitoring.
Ukraine also violated some of the rules, but not as much as the DPR and LPR, which were nevertheless backed by a much stronger Russia. Its troops then intervened in the battles for Donetsk airport and the city of Debaltseve, where they won, and by the beginning of 2015 Minsk 1 had already fallen.
Minsk 2 followed, which did not go much better, so referring to those agreements is pointless, and Off.net.mk’s incorrect translation creates the impression that those agreements prohibited Ukraine from joining NATO. However, NATO is not mentioned in those agreements.
Kuperman argues that the Ukrainians did not fully implement self-government, thereby angering Putin, who would have been satisfied with it and not escalated the conflict. This is based on the false Russian thesis that self-government also offered veto rights and that the DNR and LNR could thus block Ukraine’s entry into NATO, but such a right was not envisaged.
By the way, Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO appeared long before Zelensky came to power, back in the 1990s and 2000s, and Ukraine even has a special agreement with NATO, but the pact still does not have a consensus for its admission. France and Germany were against it back in 2008, so it is a myth that NATO insisted on expanding.
And even if NATO had accepted Ukraine, it would not have been a threat to Russia. NATO has been on Russia’s borders since 1949 through Norway, and later Poland (1999), the Baltics (2004) and Finland (2023) joined the pact, so if NATO wanted to attack Russia, it had a place to do it from and it didn’t need Ukraine for that. NATO simply doesn’t want to attack Russia.
The “instigator” Biden and the “peacemaker” Trump
Finally, Kuperman says:
Considering that Ukraine already was existentially dependent on U.S. military assistance, if President Biden had insisted that Zelensky comply with Putin’s request, it would have happened. Instead, Biden lamentably left the decision to Zelensky and pledged that if Russia invaded, the U.S. would respond “swiftly and decisively.
That pledge tragically emboldened Ukraine to prolong the war in expectation of eventually decisive U.S. military aid, which Biden then refused to supply due to fear of nuclear escalation.
Had Trump been president, he likely would not have provided such a blank check, so Zelensky would have had little choice but to implement the Minsk deals to avert war.
According to Kuperman, Joe Biden incited conflict by promising military aid, while Trump would diplomatically avoid it, but that is not true. Trump is the first US president to (sell) weapons to Ukraine (FGM-148 Javelin missile launchers, etc.) back in 2017-18. This is confusing, given that Trump is now courting Russia, but he is contradictory and unpredictable.
And it is not true that Joe Biden’s promises were empty–he provided great assistance to Ukraine, although, indeed, he hesitated because of the nuclear threat, so he did not react as quickly and decisively as he promised. But regardless of whether Biden promised anything, Zelensky as the president of Ukraine had to defend it, and not fulfill the wishes of the aggressor–as Kuperman demands.
He seems to want Ukraine to capitulate, which he masks by occasionally expressing sympathy for it and mild condemnations of Russia, and there are examples of this in his tweets and one of his articles from 2022.
Finally, Russia terrorized Ukraine back in the tsarist and Soviet times, when there was no Biden, no Zelensky, no NATO, nothing that Kuperman takes as justification for aggression, and we have written about that more distant history: here, here, here, and here.
