Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on the 10th anniversary of the beginning of Ukrainian Euromaidan

Anti-government riots started on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) ten years ago, on November 21, 2013. They triggered the current disaster in Ukraine and, at the same time, took it to the point of no return.

Skilled US and European-trained provocateurs brought crowds of people into the streets under the attractive slogans of “a better European life,” visa-free travel to the EU countries, democracy, freedom of speech, human rights and an anti-corruption struggle. In reality, these well-orchestrated mass riots, paid for from outside, were aimed at overthrowing the legitimate authority. Literally, from the first Euromaidan days, it was clear that this was yet another colour revolution, a favoured brainchild of the US and its allies.

In January and February of 2014, artificially encouraged riots developed into an armed mutiny and ended in an anti-constitutional coup that was rejected by residents of many districts of the country.

 The November 2013 events were triggered by the government’s decision to suspend the planned signing of the EU Association Agreement with a view to analysing the consequences of it in terms of the effects on the Ukrainian economy. I’d like to emphasise that it was only about the suspension of the signing of the agreement, not its cancellation. The problem was that the new commitments Kiev was to assume under the EU Association Agreement were at odds with its obligations to the CIS free trade zone.

Western and Ukrainian propagandists deliberately avoid speaking about this important point even though it is a key to understanding the tragic situation we are seeing today. Ten years ago, the delay in the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU upset the Western plans on trying to break Ukraine away from Russia and destroy historically established economic, humanitarian, cultural, spiritual, family and fraternal ties that had united our countries and peoples for many centuries.

The West recalled its abortive attempt to lay its hands on Ukraine during the 2004 Orange Revolution when overseas ideologists invented a third round of elections in violation of the Ukrainian constitution with a view to pushing through a defeated candidate. This is why their actions in 2013 were more sophisticated and brazen. Their goal was to subordinate the Ukrainian elites in order to pump resources out of Ukraine and turn it into a hotbed of instability and a bridgehead for an attack on Russia.

In November 2013, the West and the radical neo-Nazi Ukrainian opposition went all-out to finally change Ukraine’s multi-vector course and put its economy and politics into the neocolonialist Western coordinate system. The United States and its satellites acted crudely and cynically, enforcing the principle – whoever is not with us, is against us. In this way, they compelled Kiev to make an artificial choice between the West and Russia.

It is appropriate to ask today what the events on Euromaidan have given Ukraine and whether its “blue dream” of integration into the European family has come true. The answer is obvious. The self-sufficient, industrial and populous republic of the former USSR has turned into a poor, dying territory. Ukraine has lost its state independence. It is on the Western colonialists’ payroll who now determine its domestic and foreign policy.

Mass violations of human rights and freedoms have become routine in Ukraine and its citizens are discriminated on the basis of ethnicity and language. A corrupt neo-Nazi dictatorship is raging in the country where lawlessness and mayhem reign. A totalitarian, repressive machine that suppresses dissent is working at full capacity. Reprisals by the central authorities and the eight-year civil war have prompted six of Ukraine’s 27 regions to take the decision to join Russia.

The Ukrainians that were on Maidan a decade ago could hardly imagine what tragic consequences it would lead to.

Sadly, the fraternal Ukrainian people have become a hostage to the Anglo-Saxons, and the regime that serves their interests. They have to live under tyranny, in fact, in a colony that fully depends on foreign handouts. This is the cost of the notorious “European choice.” It concealed the West’s cold-blooded plan to turn Ukraine into a Russophobic and aggressive nationalist state and use it as a weapon in its existential struggle against Russia. Ukraine is paying for this with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives and millions of broken destinies.