Biased article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta

The authors of the article “On the reinstatement of the constitutional order in several countries”, which appeared in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on August 14, ponder whether a military intervention would be an acceptable response on the part of the international community to military coups in African and Asian countries. This line of thought completely overlooks the elephant in a brightly lit and transparent room. 

The journalists, who were too humble to put their signatures to the article, cited Niger as an example in their analysis of the preconditions for an armed interference of neighbouring countries in response to the coup. In addition to Niger, they make references to Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and even Afghanistan.

However, an analysis like this cannot be considered complete and objective unless it factors in the bloody Ukrainian Maidan coup of 2014: the coup took place one day after the [Ukrainian] president and the opposition reached a settlement agreement, with Germany, Poland and France acting as guarantors. Why is it important to speak about it? It is important because it has become one of the most telling examples of the practical efforts to put into effect the double standards that are broadly used by the West to impose the notorious rules-based order. 

The United States and Europe vehemently denounce Russia’s refusal to accept the illegitimate change of power in Kiev in 2014; yet, in the case of Niger, they support the plans to resort to force to reinstate constitutional order in that country.

No one expects journalists to make a detailed comparative analysis of the coups in Ukraine and Niger, to say nothing of condemning these coups. This is not the objective or responsibility of the fourth power. Besides, each coup d'état pursues its own goals and in the case of Ukraine outside influence became a strong and decisive factor. However, to have a full picture one needs to compare the outside reaction to these events from the United States and from their NATO allies.

Today, the West is ready to support military intervention in Niger. At the same time, in 2014 Washington and Brussels’ response to the coup they had encouraged in Ukraine was diametrically opposite. They shook hands with and applauded Alexander Turchinov, Arseny Yatsenyuk and Petr Poroshenko.

Here are just a few details. Representatives of American and European political circles, members of the European Parliament and US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland regularly visited the Maidan protest site from November 2013 through February 2014 to openly express their support for the protesters’ demands. Assistance was rendered in public and off the record to the leaders of the protest movement. After the coup no one in the West decried the actions of Maidan leaders and protesters; instead they simply recorded the change of power in Ukraine.

Nor did the West give tough assessments of further actions by Maidan activists and radical nationalists, who proceeded to bully and assault their opponents. There are plenty of examples: assaulting representatives of public authorities, setting buses of Anti-Maidan participants on fire in Korsun-Shevchenkovsky, the tragedy in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, to name but a few.

It appears that the West only condemns whatever is done without their involvement or not in their narrow selfish interests. Why did the authors from Nezavisimaya Gazeta keep silent about it if they started commenting on the phenomenon of a coup in the contemporary world? This is a rhetorical question.

We call on journalists to remember the old postulate еx injuria jus non oritur – illegal acts do not create law. The anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine, which was funded and supported by the West, along with its ugly and, unfortunately, bloody implications, as well as actions by NATO countries to destroy Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and other countries, all of which fell victims to the geopolitical ambitions of the collective West, should never be forgotten when comparative analyses of coups in various parts of the world are made. This should become the gold standard for a global-scale analysis, otherwise the approach to this topic can be considered one-sided at best.