David R Marples. European Politics & Society. Volume 17, Issue 4, December 2016.

Introduction

The events of Euromaidan have not surprisingly attracted the interest of the scholarly community. The event, which featured as a headline on social media for almost two years, effectively polarized opinions. In terms of scholarly output, several books have appeared in English (Balaklytskyi, 2015; Kurkov, 2014; Marples & Mills, 2015; Sakwa, 2015; Wilson, 2014; Yekelchyk, 2015), and numerous scholarly articles (Baysha, 2015; Dickinson, 2014; Diuk, 2014; Horvath, 2015; Kulyk, 2014; Kuzio, 2015; Minakov, 2015; Onuch, 2015; Popova, 2014; Shveda & Park, 2014). Though some have focused on social media, there has not been as yet a detailed discussion of the focus and content of the Russian media approach to the conflict in Ukraine, which is often dismissed as the work of hired ‘trolls,’ paid to produce propaganda on behalf of the Russian government. This paper suggests that such an approach is simplistic and that there is a clearly defined methodology and purpose to the treatment of Euromaidan by the Russian media, that is somewhat more subtle in nature and by no means static. Because the subject matter is so large, this paper concentrates on two specific time periods of February 2014—the period of the overthrow of former president Viktor Yanukovych and installation of a new Ukrainian government—and February 2015, when the second Minsk agreement came into effect (http://ria.ru/world/20150212/1047311428.html) and the fighting eased after the separatist takeover of the town of Debaltseve.

The paper provides an analysis primarily of Russian media narratives but provides also a postscript on the Ukrainian response, which at the time of writing is still emerging and is taking the form of a process of ‘Decommunization’ under the auspices of the Institute of National Culture and its director, Volodymyr Viatrovych. In addition to the changing of names of over 600 cities, towns, and villages, and thousands of street names, the goal appears to be to eliminate the Communist Party from national life and the Soviet period from national memory. To some extent, Ukraine is following the practices carried out in Eastern Ukraine in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but it is much more difficult, not only because of the continuing conflict in some parts of the east and on the border with Crimea, but also because the Soviet period still resonates with nostalgia in several regions. The topic deserves much fuller treatment but the time is premature because it is not yet possible to make an assessment of the success of the project. This paper perceives certain similarities between Russian narratives on Euromaidan and Ukraine’s attempt at removing Communism as a facet of current and past life.

The ‘coup’ and the rise of extremist forces

Russian official media, which has become the predominant voice under the presidency of Vladimir Putin (2000-2008, and 2012-the present), portray the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych from office in February 2014 in two key ways: first, as a coup d’etat that removed a democratically elected president from power as the result of the rise of extremist neo-Nazis forces; and second as a direct result of Western involvement by the EU and, especially, the United States. Let us examine each of these interpretations in turn.

The Russian leadership has never expressed much sympathy for Yanukovych, either at the time of his overthrow or subsequently. He had ‘lost control over the situation’ and had been ‘tricked into [joining] Europe.’ He had failed to defend the constitutional order as radicals threatened the Russian-speaking population and the Jewish population (because the ‘world’s most notorious anti-Semites’ were about to come to power). Yanukovych behaved ‘like a coward,’ negotiating terms of surrender with the West at a time when his police were risking their lives. He had bargained with the West for support, but instead his would-be allies had bankrolled the Right Sector (see below) and deliberately prevented Yanukovych from restoring order in the country (http://www.rg.ru/2014/02/23/ukrainasite.html).

Yet, Yanukovych was the legitimate president of Ukraine, according to Russian narratives, because he was elected democratically with the participation of all Ukrainian citizens, and thus the Ukrainian Parliament ‘was not authorized to deprive him of his status.’ As one official stated: ‘the decision of the Rada [Parliament] has no legal basis since the impeachment procedure was not followed and Yanukovych lost his position as a result of an armed coup with active support by the West’ (http://www.vesti.ru/doc. html?id=2328918).

At the Munich Security Conference in early February 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov questioned Western diplomats about the deployment of racist and antiSemitic Nazi symbols and flags on the Maidan and the armed takeover of administrative buildings in Ukraine (http://www.rg.ru/2014/02/02/munhen-site.html). Another government source reported that swastika emblems had appeared on the barricades in Kyiv, along with ‘bureaucrats from Lviv’ wearing Nazi uniforms, and that Euromaidan had transformed from a gathering of naïve (many reports use the adjective ‘drunken’) youths waving EU flags to a ‘mob of extremists from the Right Sector’ under the nationalist red-and-black flag.

The Russian version of events was that in order to gain a geostrategic victory over Russia, the West agreed to cooperate with ultra-right nationalists, who represent the biggest threat to stability in the EU today, and with which Russia firmly refused dialogue (http://www.rg.ru/2014/02/23/ukraina-site.html). Increasingly Russian narratives depicted Euromaidan as a violent affair in which participants—rather than the police forces—committed most of the atrocities. Reports noted how Ukrainian law enforcement units struggled to deal with militant protesters who were busy looting and stealing from stores and the central office of the Party of Regions. Other units were ‘storming’ the side streets. They committed violence against women, acts of arson, and anarchy (http://www.rg.ru/printable/2014/02/19/pogrom.html). Accounts featured the attack on Rostyslav Vasylko, secretary of the Lviv regional Communist Party, who was accused by a mob of being one of the Maidan snipers, and tortured, severely beaten, and robbed (http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=1332290).

Other reports focused on the actions of the Berkut police against demonstrators as an ‘anti-terrorist’ campaign (the same term later used by the Ukrainian government to describe the attack on separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk regions)—armed extremists were shooting police officers, aiming for the head or throat, innocent people were murdered, women were humiliated, buildings and cars destroyed. In Donetsk at this same time (20 February 2014), the city remained neutral, but police and Cossack units were patrolling the streets, fearful that forces might arrive ‘from the western regions’ to try to destabilize the situation (http://izvestia.ru/news/566170).

Who were these extremist forces? Initially the radical forces were perceived from Moscow as part of the political party Svoboda, whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok was notorious for his anti-Semitic views earlier in his career, which resulted in his expulsion from Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party. Subsequently, Svoboda, which had received over 10% of votes in the parliamentary elections of 2012 (thus entering the Parliament for the first time), gave way to a broader faction called Pravyy Sektor (hereafter Right Sector), many of whose members were Russian speakers from Eastern and Central Ukraine, but described as the ‘heirs of Bandera,’ and through Euromaidan acquired a quasi-democratic route to power (http://www.rg.ru/2014/02/21/aktualno-site.html). Wearing masks, a Russian report narrates, the Right Sector carried out anti-Jewish pogroms in Lviv, and in Kyiv ‘crushed and destroyed everything in their path,’ robbing stores and blocking roads, even laying claim to the Pecherska Lavra monastery (by issuing a proclamation of a Kyiv Patriarchate to sever the monastery’s links from the Moscow Patriarchate) and conducting a witch-hunt of their political opponents (http:// www.rg.ru/2014/02/23/lavra-site.html).

Russia narratives constantly have made historical analogies. Ukraine was transformed into a ‘post-Chernobyl’-like environment, with deserted streets, closed banks and ATMs, empty stores and a paralyzed transit system. Inhabitants were fleeing Kyiv during Euromaidan. It was like ‘the times of fascist occupation.’ Those unable to leave were hiding in their apartments, afraid of looters and masked gangs armed with batons (http://izvestia.ru/news/566333). Another compared the situation to the chaotic times of the 1919 Russian Civil War.

From February 2014 to the present, however, one theme has been ever-present in Russian narratives, namely that Ukrainians have become ‘indoctrinated in a nationalistic spirit’ that feeds off anti-Russian propaganda and that this nationalism is now firmly entrenched with the support of current Ukrainian leaders, including President Petro Poroshenko, who signed a decree on ‘Defender of the Motherland’ day (23 February) to move this holiday to 14 October, the date of the establishment of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in 1942, which fought battles against Soviet forces into the early 1950s (http:// vz.ru/news/2015/2/27/731925.html). As with Bandera, the reference is once again to antiSoviet and allegedly pro-Nazi actions during World War II and the years that followed.

Russia and the role of the west

From the outset of Euromaidan, Russia’s perspective has been that it took place as a result of direct Western involvement, and that the West manifestly failed to deal and even made a pact with extremism. Moreover, virtually all reports from media affiliated with the government maintain that Euromaidan could not have occurred without support from the EU and United States. Foreign Minister Lavrov, who has echoed the opinions of his president since his appointment in 2004, perceives the civil revolution as the culmination of an ‘old and deliberate strategy of the West to contain Russia’ rather than a manifestation of domestic tendencies. In turn it is said to have resulted from the habit of ‘Europeans’ to perceive Russia as outside Europe, which in his view is a recipe for instability (http://vz.ru/news/ 2014/10/13/710142.html).

The narratives note that the EU pushed constantly for an Association Agreement with Ukraine. The outcome, in Russia’s view, was an abstract view of ‘freedom’ for Ukraine, as opposed to an authoritarian path with Russia, and a last chance for the country to join the EU, even though membership was not even discussed in the Agreement. Thus supporters of Euromaidan became convinced that Russia sought to use the Customs Union as a neo-imperialist tool to remove Ukraine from its European path and their country was presented as a victim of Moscow (http://www.rg.ru/2014/02/10/kosachev.html). Mikhail Remizov, President of the Russian Institute of National Strategy (also linked closely to the president’s office), noted that a wide EU propaganda campaign in favor of the Agreement had captured the imagination of many people. In reality the latter was a ‘humiliating colonial document’ that demonstrated the insufficient development of national consciousness in Ukraine, and the desire to entrust the fate of the nation to another, historically more successful force. A considerable number of Ukrainians suffer from an ‘inferiority complex’ and ‘provincialism,’ and thus want to join the EU (http://www.rg.ru/2014/02/ 12/kiev.html).

Remizov maintains also that there was a third element among the protesters in addition to the young pro-Europeans and ‘wild nationalists,’ namely a middle class, involved in a ‘consumerist rebellion’ against the state (i.e. Yanukovych). A similar situation occurred during the protests in Russia in 2012, prior to the presidential elections, but it did not turn on the authorities, partly because Russia ‘is not as anarchic as Ukraine’ (http:// www.rg.ru/2014/02/12/kiev.html). In short, Ukrainians have an inherent tendency toward extremism and anarchy whereas Russians herald from a more mature nation.

In February 2014, the foreign ministers of Poland, France, and Germany flew to Kyiv to try to broker an agreement between Yanukovych and the protesters. Moscow regarded their mission as a positive phenomenon, though the Russian representative, Vladimir Lukin, refused to sign the ‘road map’ that would have left Yanukovych in power until the end of 2014, pending new elections. Russia praised the French Foreign Minister, nonetheless, for stating that: ‘the unity of Europe depends on the cooperation of Europe and Russia’ (http://www.rg.ru/2014/02/21/aktualno-site.html). Yet Lavrov maintained that the European ministers had arrived without an invitation and wished to intervene directly in internal Ukrainian politics. Thus Russia was correct not to sign the road map and his country could not remain indifferent to the ‘Ukrainian mayhem’ (http://www.rg.ru/2014/ 02/23/evropa-site.html).

Lastly, while the United States features less prominently in narratives directly about Euromaidan, its alleged control over the current Ukrainian government (partly through the International Monetary Fund) is asserted frequently and based partly on the telephone conversation between US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland discussing the relative merits of candidates for positions in the new Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine; and partly on the appearance of US Senator John McCain in Kyiv during the Euromaidan, including a photo-op with nationalist leader Tyahnybok (http://www.rg.ru/2014/02/07/stenogramma-site.html; Marples & Mills, 2015, p. 254).

The contrasting views illustrate that beneath the propaganda that permeates social networks, there are different strands of opinion as to what has happened in Ukraine, and how Russia should respond. Regarding the latter, the two main strands are federalization and the concept of Novorossiya. Both featured in Russian narratives in 2014-2015; however, the Novorossiya concept soon began to fall from prominence. Instead, Russia focused on the advantages of the ‘Balkanization’ of Ukraine. Its intrusions began in Crimea, then moved to Eastern and Southern Ukraine, but eventually were limited to parts of the Donbas, that is, the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in the far east of the country. By late 2015, Russia’s commitments to the defense of the Syrian regime precluded further adventurism in Eastern Ukraine.

The official stance in 2014-early 2015 focused on several issues: persecution of Russian speakers, indigenization of culture and public life in Russophone areas, and above all Ukrainian atrocities in the Donbas during what Kyiv termed the ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation,’ but which Moscow has regarded from the outset as a civil war.

Russia’s invasion of Crimea

The prevailing views about the annexation of Crimea from the Russian side were as follows. Crimeans required protection from the American-inspired civil war in Ukraine, backed by up to 5000 paramilitary forces from Western Ukraine. Alleged were physical threats to the rights of the ethnic Russian population on the peninsular and elsewhere—the bill abolishing the controversial 2012 language law was regularly cited, though it was rescinded after several days—the treatment of Russians as second-class citizens in Ukraine (http://www. rg.ru/2014/02/25/sevastopol.html), and Crimea’s fear that it had been abandoned by the government of Ukraine.

Russian reports maintain that since the 1990s, Crimea has been betrayed by Russia many times, including by Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev, who ‘donated’ it to Ukraine in 1954, and Boris Yeltsin (president of Russia, 1991-1999), who signed a friendship treaty with Ukraine in 1997 that confirmed the then borders between the two countries. Prior to Russia’s takeover, Russian businesses reportedly were no longer in evidence and Russian cultural events were rare, yet the peninsula was ethnically and intrinsically Russian (in reality ethnic Russians make up 55% of the population). Ukraine had neglected Crimea in terms of investments yet Ukrainian oligarchs had built private residences on the seafront. Crimeans felt that the new Kyiv government would erase even further the ‘Russian spirit’ in Crimea (http://izvestia.ru/news/566671). Thus ‘unknown paramilitaries’ arrived at Simferopol airport in late February 2014 to support local self-defence units against the ‘nationalists’ in Kyiv.

The prevailing view in Russia was that although the Crimean operation was a success, in other cities there were problems. For example, in Odesa and Kharkiv, although ‘60-70% of the population ‘still opposed the government in Kiev,’ they were no longer willing to go to the barricades. Russia could still ‘swallow up’ Ukraine, the goal of the more militant hardliners, but lacked the support of the younger generation there and many Russians regarded most of Ukraine, other than its western regions, as friendly toward Russia—a view that was accurate before Crimea’s annexation (http://www.msk.kp.ru/daily/26353/ 3235936). These conclusions tally with those of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, that is, that most Ukrainian residents, even in the south-east, whether Russian or Ukrainian speaking, support the national integrity of the Ukrainian state within its 1991 borders (http://www.public-consultation.org/studies/Ukraine_0315.pdf).

The War in Donbas

After the failure of the Novorossiya concept—the turning point was that major cities like Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk opted to support the Ukrainian government—Russian emphasis moved once again to the concept of federalization or, as some put it, Balkanization, the creation of autonomous regions assigned significant powers of decision-making. Russia’s justification was that the Ukrainian ATO, assisted by independent and out of control proNazi battalions (the ‘Azov’ and ‘Aidar’ are the most frequently mentioned) (http://rt.com/ news/186576-ukraine-battalion-war-crimes/), was carrying out atrocities. These include artillery shelling of towns and settlements, crimes against civilians, the poisoning of the water supply in Luhansk region, and refusal to allow women and children to evacuate from the war zones (http://www.rg.ru/2015/02/04/ludi-poln.html; http://www.rg.ru/2015/ 02/05/otravlenie-site-anons.html).

These actions were compared to the treatment of the internees of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, but, stresses one report, ‘genocide is too mild a description’ (http:// lifenews.ru/news/149201). The term is incidentally a rejoinder to Ukrainian accusations that ‘Russians’ carried out genocide in the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33. Today in Kyiv, the Holodomor Memorial, founded in 2009, contains a poster with the list of ‘perpetrators’ of the famine-genocide headed by I.V. Stalin, Lazar Kaganovich, and Vyacheslav Molotov, thus implicitly actions perpetrated on the orders of authorities in Moscow. Today, the Ukrainian government in Kyiv is depicted in Russian narratives as the destroyer of the city of Donetsk, the former stronghold of the Regions Party, Yanukovych, and his Cabinet.

Indoctrination’ in Ukraine

The emphasis on the new Ukrainian regime as followers of Bandera reveals another fundamental aspect of Russian perspectives of Ukraine, namely the view that the current leaders, as well as former president Viktor Yushchenko, seek to rewrite the history of the country from earliest times to the present, and especially producing revisionist accounts of World War II that deny the positive impact of and sacrifices involved in the Soviet victory. In this way, Ukraine severs its ‘ancient historical ties’ to Russia and seeks to indoctrinate children in anti-Soviet and Russophobic interpretations of the past. Much is made of Ukrainian leaders’ references to the ancient origins of Ukraine and interpretations of the word ‘Ukraina’ being taken out of context from its original and ‘accurate’ meaning of borderland, and claims that it originated from much earlier times http://www.vestifinance.ru/articles/53277.

Thus one account notes that Poroshenko is ‘pretending to be an historian’ in referring to the 1000th anniversary of the death of Prince Volodymyr (Vladimir), the creator of the medieval European state Rus’-Ukraine, which in Russian historiography never existed. Mikhail Migakov, director of the Russian Military History Society, comments: ‘This is total ignorance. We only use the word “Ukrainians” to describe the population of the borderlands. Ukrainian young people have been indoctrinated for the past 23 years that they belong to the most ancient nations of the world.’ Historian Andrey Matchukov adds: ‘One thousand years ago people lived in a country simply called Rus’—they were just Russian people,’ and no one used the words ‘Ukraine’ or ‘European’ (http://www.vesti. ru/doc.html?id=2384951).

In addition to the Kyivan Rus’ state of the tenth century, the main historical focus of the narratives is World War II, still referred to in Russia, which concentrates on the years 1941- 1945 only, as the ‘Great Patriotic War.’ But Ukraine is rewriting history textbooks and has developed a new concept of national-patriotic education, which takes on an overtly antiRussian character. Rather than learning about the heroism of the Soviet army, Ukrainian children hear about the UPA, and Bandera has become a national hero (he was named as such by Yushchenko in 2010 but the designation was revoked under Yanukovych), and Ukrainian children are no longer horrified by Fascism. Instead they are taught slogans such as‘Glory to Ukraine, glory to our heroes, death to the Moskali,’ a phrase very similar to the greetings heard in Nazi Germany. Schools teach hatred of Russians and children chant a mantra that ‘Moskali are occupants’ (http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2334530).

Russian comments about Ukraine stress that the ideology of contemporary Ukraine is based on ‘lies and hypocrisy.’ The national Ukrainian idea is declared to be fake, and if pursued, it will bring about a ‘fascist dictatorship,’ which has nothing in common with ‘European values’ (http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2346882). The logic here is that Stepan Bandera, the leading ‘hero’ figure of the past in contemporary Ukraine, was a Fascist, who had much on common and actively collaborated with Nazi Germany. Thus celebration of his cult, which featured, for example, on his birth-date, 1 January (2014), on the Maidan, is evidence that the new leadership of Ukraine is ‘neo-Nazi’ and dedicated to bringing values of the Fascist period to the country, thereby desecrating the memory of the Soviet victory and defeat of Hitler 70 years ago. Russia in fact invited Soviet war veterans in Ukraine to Moscow for the anniversary parade on 9 May 2015 (http://news24today. info/ukrainskikh-veteranov-priglasili-na-parad-pobedy-v-moskvu.html).

In Ukraine, according to the narratives, history is being rewritten and a new concept of national-patriotic education is being developed under the slogan ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ This new patriotism is perceived as having a ‘clear anti-Russian character’, omitting the heroism of the Soviet Army as well as the Russian period in the history of Ukraine. Instead attention is focused on the ‘brutal UPA’ and the glorification of Euromaidan. Bandera is the new national hero and Ukrainian children are no longer horrified by Fascism. Children are instructed to divide the world into ‘ours’ and ‘the others,’ along the lines of Nazi Germany (hence the ‘Glory to the heroes, death to the Moskali!’ noted above). Blue and yellow ribbons are now appearing on the backpacks of schoolchildren, and people have stopped buying goods linked to Russia. Along with love for their native land, schools also instruct pupils to ‘hate Russia,’ offend their neighbors, and forget their ‘common past.’ Children must repeat the mantra ‘Moskali, you are the occupants!’ (http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2334530)

Russian ‘solutions’ for Ukraine

In official Moscow parlance Ukraine is in economic turmoil, and its leaders little more than puppets of oligarchs and ‘neo-Nazi’ warlords who persecute Russian speakers. It is incumbent on Russia therefore to provide solutions. Putin and others consider Ukrainians and Russians as essentially one people, with a common history dating back over 1000 years, and a united memory of victory in World War II. But what then is Ukraine?

Political scientist Elena Ponomareva provides one response: ‘Contemporary Ukraine is like a quilt made by all the Great Powers in the 20th century.’ But, she adds, it is also ‘an artificial creation of the Bolsheviks, who were generously giving away Russian territories’ (http://www.kp.ru/daily/26342.7/3227743/). The singular lack of recognition not only of an independent Ukrainian state, but also one with a past dating back to medieval times pervades all official Russian thinking on Ukraine from Putin downward.9 But the ‘solution’ today, despite the reported dire conditions in that country, has become less ambitious.

Official Moscow chides Russian nationalists who hope for the ‘inevitable disintegration’ of Ukraine and annexation of its eastern regions. There are no separatist parties in the region seeking annexation by Russia and elite groups there wished to retain their current status (http://www.rg.ru/2014/02/04/ukraina.html). Remizov, comments in like vein: Russia should concentrate on cultivating political ‘subjects’ in southeastern Ukraine and its federalization rather than the dissolution of the country. Moscow should exploit psychological divisions between the south-east and the rest of Ukraine to counteract ‘the Bandera commissars’ (http://www.rg.ru/2014/02/12/kiev.html).

As the Minsk-2 agreement in February 2015 demonstrated, Russia is looking for alternatives to occupying Ukraine. It placed hopes on the moderate Poroshenko to seek a compromise, but in the view of Russian leaders he resorted instead to further escalation. Therefore Russia must secure the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics’ (the Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] and Luhansk People’s Republic [LNR]) from further intrusions from the Ukrainian army, and ensure that the Donbas remains ‘Russia-friendly’ without being part of Russia—this would also represent another significant economic burden during a period of economic decline. Russian narratives see the United States as the key enemy, and its strategy—which is compared to that of Hitler in moving to Russia through Ukraine in 1941—to attain the complete isolation and encirclement of Russia with Belarus and Kaliningrad as its next targets. Thus a friendly Donbas is the first and essential step.

In turn, this assumption means that Russia is content, up to a point, to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine, other than Crimea, keeping the DNR and LNR within a federative state structure with veto power over Ukrainian decisions and maintaining close ties to Russia (http://www.rg.ru/2015/02/13/radzihovskii-site.html)—the status of the Russian language is often cited as a key reason but is less important than military-security and economic issues. Until this situation is reached, however, propaganda continues to focus on the familiar themes of a Western dominated Ukrainian government mired in corruption, held to ransom by oligarchs, and threatened with a ‘third Euromaidan’ by neoNazi armed battalions from Right Sector and other paramilitary units from Western Ukraine.

Problems of the Russian narratives

The Russian perspective, though not unified, monopolizes official TV, radio, newspapers, and social media, as well as media geared to foreign audiences. It is abetted by Western failure to acknowledge that within the propaganda can be found some halftruths alongside the obvious fabrications. Thus what is lacking—and indeed has never been attempted—is a balanced and accurate information about the events and results of Euromaidan. Several basic problems can be identified that arise because of what might be termed ‘partial’ truths in the Russian accusations.

(a) The removal of Yanukovych from power: though not Western inspired, this event did in fact constitute a regime change that was catalyzed by more radical elements on Euromaidan. Yanukovych lacked support from Moscow and was left to his fate as a weak leader who had failed the test as president, but his removal prevented a more democratic path to unseat him through elections, as the European leaders had advocated. On the other hand, he was preparing to leave his palace at Mezhyhirya some days before the alleged coup, thus that event remains open to debate.

(b) The claim that neo-Nazi mobs took power in Ukraine: there were extremists among the protesters who escalated the conflict. Some were from parties that have embraced Nazi policies, racism, and a narrow ethnic nationalism. For a time they did determine events. They failed, however to capture popular support, as is evidenced by the results of the 2014 presidential elections, in which Tyahnybok received 1.16% and Dmytro Yarosh (Right Sector leader) received 0.7% of the popular vote. In other words, this is an extremist fringe in Ukraine that can only succeed if the current government collapses or if it attains enough weapons and military support to engineer a takeover. That is not as far-fetched as it may seem and the volunteer battalions are committed and well-armed, and very dissatisfied with the current Poroshenko-Yatsenyuk administration in Kyiv.

(c) Third, Russian media provide almost daily pseudo-historical accounts of the Soviet and Imperial Russian past and especially World War II. The Kyiv government is linked directly to the former anti-Soviet insurgents of UPA and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and to the name of Stepan Bandera, who is regarded as a traitor to his country in Soviet and contemporary Russian accounts, as well as in much of eastern and southern Ukraine. Reasoned and accurate accounts of Ukraine during World War II in academic and popular form are much needed. During his presidency Viktor Yushchenko (2005-2010) authorized a nationalist version of history, but this one also lacked objectivity (Kasianov, 2015, pp. 149-155). New texts and narratives of the war years in Ukraine could alleviate this problem. The Bandera line within the OUN was and remains static and unchanging; it will never be acceptable to half—and perhaps the majority—of Ukrainians and it even divides Ukrainians in Canada. Its survival does give some credibility to Russian invective.

(d) Fourth, the Russian authorities have swamped social networks with ‘trolls’ and freelance journalists (some from the West) who are paid to propagate the official Moscow line. What Western governments (and Ukraine) lack are objective, as opposed to emotional, responses. The typical portrayal of a ‘democratic’ pro-European Ukraine fighting an authoritarian Russia is deeply flawed. Ukrainian society faces endemic problems that need to be addressed, not least corruption and oligarchic control of resources and even entire regions. The surrogate radio and TV services that have been used in Poland to counter the official line in Belarus are a good example of what might be effective (http://www.belsat.eu/ru/articles/stalinizaciyavsej-strany-polovina-rossiyan-schitayut-repressii-opravdannymi/). Programs could focus on historical and cultural themes, Russian-Ukrainian relations, and the history of Crimea, as well as alternative views of contemporary events.

Ukraine’s response—the de-communization laws

This paper has described critically the way Russian media have portrayed both the events of Euromaidan and the past, particularly World War II, which has retained mythical status. We have not focused on Ukrainian perspectives of the same events, but these have also taken on a distinctly one-sided hue that is largely nationalist in orientation. On 9 April 2015, Radical Party MP Yurii Shukhevych, the son of UPA leader Roman Shukhevych—and others—introduced four bills into the Ukrainian Parliament that became known as the ‘de-Communization Laws,’ among whose authors was historian Volodymyr Viatrovych, director of the Institute of National Memory. The initial law, introduced by Shukhevych, sought to recognize the founders of Ukrainian independence, including Bandera and R. Shukhevych, and make it a criminal offence to question them. They also authorized the removal of Communist and Nazi symbols from Ukraine, the opening of hitherto restricted archives, and dubbed the government during the entire period of Soviet rule as one of tyranny. Several facets of the laws appeared to limit historical inquiry and as a result they came under criticism from both local and Western academics.

President Poroshenko authorized the new laws on 15 May 2015, and their authors have bitterly rejected external critiques as unwarranted, unfair, or the result of provocations by Russian secret services (see e.g. Noskov, 2015). The common argument is that Ukraine is at war and needs to be united, and the complete condemnation of the Soviet era is thus necessary in order to move forward. Yet the new laws, as with the initiatives of the Yushchenko period, do more to polarize various elements in society rather than unite them. For many in southern and eastern Ukraine, the concept of Bandera and Shukhevych as heroes is unacceptable. Among the EU countries, Poland in particular, denounced Yushchenko’s elevation of Bandera to the status of hero of Ukraine because of UPA’s ethnic cleansing of Polish communities in Volhynia in 1943 (see e.g. Weir, 2015).

The principal point of these efforts, however, is reworking past events to fit current perceptions. Here Ukraine, ironically, is following a model already well developed by Russia and Belarus, whereby there can only be one correct interpretation of the past and anything to the contrary is dubbed ‘historical revisionism.’ As a result, the roles of OUN and UPA in the twentieth century are being greatly inflated and distorted, and cited as models to emulate. In turn, the condemnation of the entire Soviet period as one of criminality seems equally misguided. Ukraine enjoyed a significant period of cultural and national development in the 1920s, played a significant role in the defeat of Nazism. Both Communist leaders like Petro Shelest and Marxist intellectuals such as Ivan Dzyuba played a part in national development, for example. There was a further time of ‘enlightenment’ during the Gorbachev leadership when Communist leaders were in power. Ukraine’s first president, Leonid Kravchuk was the former Secretary for Ideology in the Communist Party of Ukraine. The founders of the Popular Movement for Perestroika (Rukh) were all members of the party. Simply to erase all these leaders from the pantheon of progress to independence is ahistorical and absurd.

Conclusion

The Russian campaign of popular media narratives is pervasive and as far as domestic audiences are concerned, and in promoting the popularity of the Russian president, largely successful. The prevailing theme is of a neo-Nazi takeover of Ukraine and the removal of a legitimate president, bringing both economic and social chaos, and civil war in the east. The debate over whether the conflict is a civil war or a Russian-backed insurgency (or even a Russian invasion) is omnipresent and something of a diversion from the current topic. Virtually, all the events in Ukraine are attributed less to a popular uprising than a Western backed and funded coup, with the United States dictating the policy of the new Ukrainian government. At times, the narratives have benefited by moves from its alleged adversary that could be interpreted as direct interference in Ukrainian affairs. The government of Ukraine has also opened several Cabinet posts up to foreigners and perhaps most bizarrely, the governorship of Odesa region to the former president of Georgia Mikael Saakashvili. Thus Ukraine has at times abetted the themes of the narratives and provided them with an ill-deserved credibility.

The future of Ukraine as a national and unified state is under direct threat, and the past is one agency exploited in Putin’s apparent quest to either destroy or fatally weaken independent Ukraine and ensure that it joins neither European structures nor NATO. Perhaps as a result it has created a self-fulfilling prophecy—albeit only partially fulfilled—of a rightleaning Ukrainian leadership that may eventually fall prey to militant extremism. Paradoxically such an outcome would ensure that Ukraine remains outside the EU and lead only to internal chaos. Moreover, Russia and Ukraine will always be neighbors, meaning that dialogue is always necessary, however the leaderships of the two countries perceive the events of the far and recent past. Euromaidan and the subsequent Donbas conflict have thus exacerbated the disputes over history, narrowed interpretations and created patriotic versions of contested events. The first victim in either case is historical truth and a lack of middle ground, meaning that the sort of compromises reached by the two agreements in Minsk may be of short duration.