Episode 91- Ivan Katchanovski: US interference in Maidan Massacre, Zelensky is weak
Ivan Katchanovski
Professor, School of Political Studies & Conflict Studies and Human Rights Program at the University of Ottawa
Today we are joined by Prof. Ivan Katchanovski. Prof. Katchanovski teaches at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He has held academic positions at Harvard University, the State University of New York at Potsdam, the University of Toronto, and the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He specializes in researching politics and conflicts in his native Ukraine. His publications include three books and numerous articles. Ivan is currently researching and writing a book about the Maidan Massacre that occurred on 18 February 2014. More specifically, Prof. Katchanovski is investigating who carried out the attack and if the United States and other western governments were involved in the planning with the far-right (formerly Neo-Nazi) political party Svoboda to initiate regime change. He will be presenting his findings this fall at the 118th American Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting & Exhibition in Montreal. You can find more about Ivan on his University of Ottawa profile, his ResearchGate profile and his Twitter @I_Katchanovski. Due to the dense nature of this episode’s topic, we have included a full transcript for reference below.
Show Notes:
Ivan Katchanovski | University of Ottawa
Ivan Katchanovski | Research Gate
Lies About Ukraine Conflict Are Standing in the Way of a Peaceful Resolution | Truthout
Ukraine-Russia crisis: What is the Minsk agreement? | Al Jazeera
Svoboda: The rise of Ukraine's ultra-nationalists | BBC News
The "Snipers' Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine, Ivan Katchanovski, Sept 2015 | Research Gate
Are Ukraine's vast natural resources a real reason behind Russia's invasion? | Business Today
Full episode transcript
Rik Brooks: What's up my miners of intelligence and consciousness? I'm Rik Brooks, and this is Rik's mind. Today with me, I have Ivan Katchanovski, who is an expert on Russian and Eurasian studies and a professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa. Ivan, welcome to the show.
Professor Ivan Katchanovski: Yes. Thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be on this show.
Rik: Well, thank you so much for being here. I think in issues as complex as this, the best way that I like to start is to ask you a little bit about your background. So like, if you could tell our listeners where you're from and I think, you know, kind of how you got interested in political science. I think that that'd be a good place for us to start. And then from there we can kind of tackle the giant elephant, the elephant in the room.
Ivan: I am originally from Ukraine, from the western part of Ukraine, which is close to Poland. And glad there is no war there yet. So this is kind of a little bit positive, actually positive development, if you can say this, because it's huge. Anything negative or what it compares, it just has negative consequences for a lot of Ukrainians. But I'm originally from a Western Ukraine and I studied in the United States.
I got my PhD in the US and afterwards I did research on different topics. I specialize in the politics of conflicts in Ukraine. I wrote my dissertation on this topic and published books and articles in academic journals. I'm still working now on the books about Ukraine, in particular on the war between Russia and Ukraine and other conflicts like the Maidan Massacre in Ukraine. I held various academic positions at various universities in the U.S. such as the State University of New York, in Potsdam, Harvard University where I was a visiting scholar. I was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Library of Congress at the Kluge Center. I also did my postdoctoral research position with the University of Toronto. I am at the University of Ottawa in Canada. I began interested in politics when I was a child.
I wanted to study politics because this was a very important issue. You have the Cold War and I wanted basically to, to become a kind of professor of political science or international relations because of the conflict, because of the Cold War and because of the experience of my parents and grandparents.
My mother, She told me about how she grew up and how she never moved from any place on her own, but she lived in five different countries without moving on her own. Because of politics, because of World War Two, because of Nazi occupation of Poland. Then it was Poland, then it was occupied by Nazi Germany. Then she was expelled to the Soviet Union. So then Ukraine, and then you have independent Ukraine and there was also a place holder government after World War II. So you have different countries basically with different languages and so on.
I grew up interested in, becoming interested in politics and in conflicts and that's why I research professionally conflicts in Ukraine and politics in Ukraine and that was this became very important issue not only to people who do this, whose course this is, but also for many people in the world, because this is number one issue now.
Rik: It definitely is. And I, I just didn't if you were to ask me before this all went down, I didn't think it was going to happen. You know, we had the annexation of Crimea. And I don't. I don't remember the date, but it was like 2014, 2015 that Russia annexed Crimea.
Ivan: Yes
Rik: And it's not a region of the world that I. I'm super in tune with. I know a lot of a lot of it, you know, past history, but not not so much the modern. And then there was the euro… Not... the Euro Maiden, was it the Euro Maiden?
Ivan: Yes.
Rik: Yeah, I remember that. That was the protests where they ousted the other president. So I remember that. And I think that and we'll get to was that backed by the U.S.? Was that caused by the U.S. down later down the line. But I think a good place to go from here is, you know, how does something like this happen?
I mean, in your opinion, your expert opinion, how does something like this happen? And how much of this is, you know, on the United States, we have a history of a pretty shitty foreign policy. I feel like we've missed the mark a lot. So I'm curious to know, you know, how much did we play a role in this happening or what were the warning signs that we potentially missed? I'm sure you're going to bring up the Minsk agreement, but I just kind of want to get your perspective on that.
Ivan: So this is the exact question which I'm researching now for a book which I write and finishing now about the origins of this conflict and different aspects of this conflict in Ukraine, which took place starting with Maidan, Maidan massacre, the annexation of Crimea by Russia. The war in Donbas, the civil war in Donbas. And Russian intervention in Donbas lasted since 2015. And the current war between Russia and Ukraine, which is the culmination of this different conflict, which started in 2014 with the Maidan and in particular with the Maidan massacre.
And so this is the book, manuscript which I already received an invitation to submit my proposal from the US Academic Press. I hope to finish this soon and I am going to be presenting this on this topic at the American Political Science Association annual meeting in Montréal, in Canada, actually in September. So this is my research.
I can say this is the most important issue. I do not yet have all of the evidence to say it because this is still part of research and not all the evidence is available, but the conflict again, which is currently going on in Ukraine between Russia and Ukraine goes back to the Maidan and just a while ago this of the Ukrainian government by the means of the Maidan massacre of the police at Maidan protesters this massacre was crucial the start of this conflict.
It became a turning point in Ukrainian politics. But also this massacre led to the violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government, which was relatively Russian in terms of orientation and this led to a response by Russia, which then Russia escalated this conflict and annexed Crimea region in southern Ukraine, which was part of Ukraine, but was populated by ethnic Russians.
Afterwards they also started to support separatists, Russian separatists in Donbas. And finally, it drastically escalated this conflict by invading Ukraine in 2022. And in my previous media interviews, and in my publications, including the United States, put up indications, I predicted that this would happen, that the war between Russia and Ukraine could happen. There was at least a possibility or real possibility of this war.
So I tried to prevent this basically just because I said this. I saw this basically becoming a very dangerous situation and it was possible to avoid this war and to prevent it. But unfortunately, this will happen. And so now, I think it is important to understand how this happened. And that's why I'm researching this issue, in particular the role of different political actors, different countries in this conflict.
And I'm looking into the role of the United States as well. And in different context, during the war between Russia and Ukraine but also because this has also become a proxy war between the Western imperialism with the states of Russia in Ukraine. But also I'm looking to the Maidan massacre that was responsible for this and how this massacre led to the overthrow of the Ukrainian government and what this actually was from a political science perspective and evidence was this revolution, was it a coup?Was this regime change led by the United States?
So based on my current research and evidence, I can say there are different elements of all this taking place as the elements of the Velvet Revolution with the Maidan. There is also evidence of an oligarchic coup in the Maidan in 2015, but also this, that the evidence of the United States led regime change.
So it's not yet clear which one was most important, but because a lot of evidence is not yet public. In particular a lot of documents from the U.S. government which can shed a lot on the U.S. and yet involvement in this are still not publicly available. So I think it is very important to know what actually happened and who actually was responsible for this advance.
But I think this is evidence of the United States involvement in this. The Maidan led to the violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government because the US government supported this publicly and there is also other evidence, there is no evidence of direct involvement of the US in the Maidian massacre. But there was a testimony or interview by a two leaders of far right political party called "Svoboda" and they gave interview to Ukrainian journalists in the and in their book this video journalist said that these two leaders of far right party which was originally a Neo-Nazi party they said that they met along with other Maidan leaders.
They met with a representative of the West, and they did not name any specific country, but it was very likely the United States, because this representative was speaking on behalf of all Western countries. So only one country can do this and they basically discussed how the US, how Western governments can change their policy towards recognition of the existing government of Viktor Yanukovych.
They basically discussed how many people need to be killed to or for the West to stop recognizing the Yanukovych government and the Maidan leaders mentioned that like 5 people killed, 20, Western representative people said not enough, this was not enough. If there would be 100 people killed, then the U.S. and other governments, basically the Western governments would change the recognition, or encourage governments that would support Maidan opposition.
This is exactly what happened after Maidan, the massacre on February 20th. There was a question, had the Maidan protesters killed doing this, a very violent event? And immediately after this massacre took place, like within hours, there was a name for the protesters who had been killed. They were called “heavy handed”. And so this has become a very kind of, why did mention the name of protestors, heavily handed, who are killed? Even so, they were not exactly 100, but very close to 100. Many of them or some of them are not even killed in the Maidan, but they were included as a part of this victims, similar to how like heavily handed and immediately after the Maidan massacre, without any investigation, the US government and other Western governments stopped recognizing the Yanukovych government and they supported the opposition.
They recognized the new government of the Maidan, which was led by the Maidan opposition including far-right parties, including from Svoboda. So this is just the one evidence of, of the US involvement of Western government involvement in this regime change. And even then President Obama, when he gave an interview after the Maidan took place, he said that the U.S. administration, his administration, was involved in an in attention and transition of power in Ukraine with the Maidan. He also said that there was U.S. involvement, but he did not specify what kind of involvement of US. But I think that this is very important to say that this was not one Ukrainian led event, but there was the United States involvement. And after the Maidan massacre, after the new government came to power as a result of the massacre, Ukraine became what I call "US client state", because the US government became very strongly involved in Ukrainian politics and imposing on key decisions by the Ukrainian government.
Like much of this, Russia then annexed Crimea. This was done basically because the US government told or U.S. government officials told Ukrainian government officials what to do and what not to do and is specifically about the Minsk agreements. This was the U.S. government officials who said to Zelensky and Poroshenko that this agreement should not be implemented and they, basically the Ukrainian government, should disregard it.
Again, because you can become very dependent on the United States and the US government. Vice President Biden, who was before he was the president of U.S., he was vice president of the United States in the Obama administration. He was responsible for relations with Ukraine. And so he was very active in 2014 in all of these events.
And specifically after a new government was formed, he became involved in deciding or supporting who would become prime minister of Ukraine, who should be dismissed, who would be eliminated. So this kind of above the station that the US place based on if it is a Ukrainian politics after the Maidan, the same concerns as the current war between Russia and Ukraine.
Rik: Wow, that's I mean, I understood it, at a I thought a little deeper level than most people. But you went very granular there and that was a lot of information. And thank you for sharing. But those are some, I mean, I wouldn't call them accusations, right. You have the documents that you've read, but that is wild.
And just so the you were just so the folks at home aren't as familiar. The Maidan massacre is essentially where the protesters were protesting at the Maidan Square, correct? I'm correct with that?
Ivan: Yes.
Rik: And there were snipers that just started shooting people. And I don't think they ever caught any of the snipers correctly and no one was ever found out.They don't know where they came from. And it was super fishy. And you were saying that you'd found a document that said, how many people need to die at this protest in order for the West to back us? Just like really quick catch up, make sure everyone's following along. Is that a pretty good assumption of a very shortened version of what you were saying?
Ivan: Yes, very. In the interviews of two leaders of Maidan in the Ukrainian book which is published in Ukrainian and sighted this is my studies. In addition to this I did research about Maidan massacre, who was responsible, who actually committed this mass murder. And this is again, publishing people in the US conferences, academic conferences, publishing books are my research and it is an academic one.
But I found a lot of evidence, which is, I think, overwhelming without any doubt. I can say that this massacre was conducted in front of thousands of people like witnesses in front of hundreds of journalists from different countries, including the United States. CNN footage, like BBC, all of this major, NBC and CBS, I check their footage. This is the footage and then videos about the Maidan massacre live, with this massacre. So all this evidence shows that this massacre was not conducted by a government snipers or led by the police, which were there for the massacre. But still, there's nobody convicted for this mass murder. But this was conducted by snipers who were allocated the Maidan controlled buildings.
Specifically they killed and wounded police and Maidan protesters in order to falsely blame government forces. Firstly, they blame government snipers in order to allege, basically to say that they were responsible, that this was a massacre by or this from the Yanukovych government and this led to his overthrow because he was removed by the parliament.
He (Yanukovych ) was blamed for the massacre and the West basically including the United States stopped to recognizing him as a president of Ukraine. And then Biden in his memoirs, he says that when the massacre happened, just immediately after this, he called Yanukovych and told Yanukovych that he basically needed to leave. Ukraine because he need to leave the presidency of Ukraine and he has to leave Ukraine as well. So this is just without any investigation. This was again immediately blamed on Yanukovych. Even so, all the evidence, which is not only evidence which is publicly available, which I collected like hundreds of testimony, well, 500 witness testimony about snipers, videos of snipers.
These offer evidence for the Maidan massacre. And the investigation, which is publicly available. I posted on my YouTube page there are testimonies of the absolute majority of Maidan protesters who are wounded due to this massacre, and they testified that they were wounded not by the police who are charged with this massacre or any guard or snipers. They testified that they were wounded and shot from locations of Maidan controlled buildings in the back of the site.
This is consistent with forensic medical examinations, with testimonies of dozens of prosecution witnesses, with admissions by 14 members of Maidan sniper groups in public. They publicly admitted some of them were snipers. They said they received an order from Maidan leadership to massacre booth police and protestors in order to indicate how to overthrow the Yanukovych government. This was successfully done. The evidence is just overwhelming. I published this evidence, but the issue is that the media have never reported this. So it's like people who have no idea they read the New York Times or Washington Post or they watch like all the television networks in the US. They just have the image that this was done by the Yanukovych government, by the police.
Even so, there is nobody basically charged with this, nobody convicted for this massacre. And the trial is still ongoing. But all the evidence shows that the massacre was not was not conducted by government snipers, but it was conducted by the opposition snipers, including from Far-Right, organizations like Svoboda and the Right Sector. So I study this issue, as well about the issue if it is democracy or not.
Rik: Well, I want to be very, very clear with our listeners. You are not pro-Russian at all. I see you've been on record many, many times saying that this is an illegal invasion, it is a violation of international law. But you are just presenting the evidence as where it points to, Right? Like this is just you're stating facts like this?
Ivan: And I can say again, based on my research, what I gather this is not any politics. I have nothing to do with Russia. And I often supported democracy since I was a student in Ukraine. I actually went to the first demonstration, the pro-democracy anti-Soviet demonstration in 1988 in Ostaszów, when there was still Soviet Union then. And there were just a few dozen people at this demonstration, which was in Kiev, downtown Kiev. So I was the one who actually attended basically the first public legal demonstration against the Soviet Union. Then I have nothing to do with Russia and I've always supported the Western side, Western style democracy in the Ukraine.
Rik: There's a lot of shady shit going on and you're presenting that. But I mean, you're definitely not, you're not pro-Russian. But you're also, you know, a historian in a certain context. And it's my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong, that the democracy in Ukraine has never really actually had a democracy.
It has generally been more along the lines of what is set up in Russia. Correct. It's oh, man, I can't think of it's not a Junta that's in South America. It's not coming to me. But Russia is not, or Ukraine is generally that the governmental structures of Ukraine like. Jon, go ahead.
Jon: Do you mean Oblast?
Rik: Yes, an Oblast. Thank you. Is that generally the type of government it was before they overthrew the character in 2014, right?
Ivan: Unfortunately, according to my research, Ukraine is not a democracy. It's largely undemocratic. So in terms of the form of the government, Ukraine is actually very close to Russia. It is a mostly un-democratic government and Zelensky is not a Democrat as shown by the Western media. Plus, all of the opposition parties, basically he banned all of the opposition parties he just allowed one television channel, which in which all of the television channels basically news channels in Ukraine
You can just show one contact, which is the Zelensky channel. So they have just one program that only runs a news program or the same news program on all television channels. So this is just one television show. So you can imagine if this would be like if Fox News would be translated on CNN and MSNBC. It would be supporting basically Donald Trump or like CNN with a joint content would be supported, would be shown by all of the television stations when Biden was president. So there would be no opposition at all, just everything would be pro-government. This is what happened now. So he even kind of accused all his opposition leaders of basically being Russian agents and committing state treason and charged them with state treason.
That's why there's no real opposition now in Ukraine. And I think this makes Ukraine very similar now to Russia. Zelensky wants to be a new kind of Putin. This is, I think, his goal and the continuity of his public image and all this his public relations campaign, which is successful. Because going by his professional occupation, is a very good actor here.
Rik: You're blowing my mind. I didn't know what we were going to get into. And there's so many things I'm learning right now. I had no idea that he had grabbed so much power during this event, and he's completely backed by the West right now and he's almost being used as a pawn in this giant, you know, in the geopolitical sense, like you think.
I mean, the image, the images that we are getting back in the States is that like this is like the great man theory of history. Like this is a man that somehow, over all the odds got elected. He was an actor and a famous comedian. He's a comedian, a comedian that became president. And then all the world turned against him and his country.
He's rallied the troops and he's holding off this eastern advance from the Red Army, you know, so to speak. That's how I would sell this. And it's interesting to hear a different but maybe an unbiased perspective of actually what's going on, because none of us are there. During the initial push of the Russian forces, I'm a military history nut. So I was freaking out and watching all the way too much battle footage and just getting way too engrossed in this. And the one thing that I didn't do is I started researching it and I realized how incredibly nuanced this was and that there is a different perspective. There is the Russian perspective. And, you know, I don't know if we are even talking to them, which I think is hopefully we're still able to communicate.
And you can answer that in a second. But what I started to realize is that from their perspective, we have we you know, the United States has from their perspective, they've had an open hand toward us for years, and we've kind of slapped it away. And granted, they've done terrible things as have we.
But they wanted to join NATO's at one point we said no when during the reunification of Germany deal. Part of the deal was that NATO wouldn't expand eastward. We said yes. And then we lied and we added a few countries into NATO's block, which they feel like is threatening their borders. The line that they drew essentially was Ukraine. And there's a lot of countries I'm leaving out just because I have a terrible memory today. But from their perspective, like, they're they've always been like, we want to be your friends or we feel like we want to be your friends, but you guys always have us as an enemy. And Ukraine, as they started to draw closer to the West, to me, the way I looked at itis if China wanted to build a base in Mexico, we wouldn't let it happen. That's my perspective of it. That's my understanding of it. And I'm curious to get your thoughts as to if I'm way off base or if I'm a farm, if I'm getting close to hitting a home run here.
Ivan: You know, he was in the entertainment industry, but he's not very kind of Democratic politician to say this much. Yeah, I think this is very close to homminum, But I can say this is more precisely, it would be a similar situation to Canada and the US because of those historical ties, not only just geographic location but very close historical ties.
They used to be one country and like Canada and the United States basically before independence, U.S. independence. But again. But in terms of history before they became independent, Canada would be a kind of a similar conflation as Ukraine to Russia. So as again, that's Canada to the States and I mentioned this whole thing in my interview and this is what's important because I research another area of my research is the United States and Canada comparing US and Canada. So this is also related to them.
I can say this is an important issue about the Russian invasion, because obviously this is an illegal invasion. It's not justified by any of the text which was given by Putin in invading Ukraine. It was illegal under international law. And the claims by Putin that Ukraine basically is when they become a member of NATO in the near future would become a base for military missiles or weapons from the west were not supported by any evidence.
I don't think that there was likely that Ukraine could have any chances of becoming a NATO member in the political future, in fact, in part because NATO did not want to have any contact with Russia or war with Russia. And that's why they oppose, even now, membership of Ukraine, because this would mean war with nuclear Russia. And also there was no there were no Nazis in the Ukrainian government so claimed by Putin. This, the nazification is also based on the misrepresentation and his claim that is a genocide of Russians, or ethnic Russian speakers or ethnic Russians or Russian speakers in Ukraine, in Donbas, also is not supported by evidence. So this is a lot about my study and I talk about this publicly.
There was nothing just such a justification for the Russian invasion. But this does not mean that Russia did not regard Ukraine as a kind of as possibly a military is not a political situation, as simply what happened in the West Caribbean missile crisis when the Soviet Union used Cuba to deploy nuclear weapons. So they believed there was such a possibility.
They claim this as justification for this invasion because this can happen in the future. So they believe this might happen. And also they say that Ukraine basically was used as a tool against Russia and now the United States basically uses Ukraine and other Western countries use Ukraine to wage a proxy war with Russia.
This is actually the Russian government basically, this is what they wanted. They were concerned about because this this is like testimony that there are claims that the West is only interested in using Ukraine as a tool against Russia is now backed by a policy of the US by giving weapons, basically by using Ukraine to fight Russia without actually deploying U.S. military or making military forces in Ukraine, but giving weapons and giving them like intelligence and other support, money, basically, for the government, them and so on.
That's why I think a kind of context for invasion was illegal and the invasion was illegal. But this does not mean that there was no way to avoid this. It was possible to avoid this war between Russia and Ukraine. And I mentioned specifically in my interview some in my publications before this war was launched by Russia, I said that there was such a possibility in some way, you could become a neutral country. So there was no possibility of NATO membership of Ukraine even though such membership was mentioned as a possibility by NATO in 2008. But this means it was very easy for Ukraine to abandon this goal of NATO membership and become a neutral country and accept the Minsk agreement to accept basic autonomy of Donbas.This would mean that Russia would no longer have any pretext for invasion of Ukraine and would accept this in order to prevent such a war between Russia and Ukraine from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Also said that in exchange for this, Ukraine could be offered the prospect of becoming a member of the European Union in the future if it would fulfill all criteria like democracy and human rights and so on. But unfortunately, this did not happen. And now I think it would be very difficult to have a peaceful resolution to this conflict, because now this war is going on for a long time and there are a lot of casualties in Ukraine and devastation to Ukraine and if the war would continue it would have even much more negative impact on Ukraine.And I don't think that a peaceful resolution is now very likely unless there would be any change, a significant change in the military outcome of this war.
Rik: How did we get to a point where too much blood is being shed. But I do want to push back on something. You did mention that there was no evidence for like a genocide towards Russian speakers in, I believe, the Donbass region. Correct. But I do. I am curious because it's my understanding that there were laws passed to kind of get rid of the Russian language.
Ivan: Yes. Yes, I sense all these issues and I can say that there was shelling of Donbas by the imperial forces since 2013 when the Civil War started. And this war was started, not accidentally.
Rik: Right. Which could be a bit of an aggressor, you know, language is very, very important in your home country of Canada. They have laws in Quebec that it's illegal, I believe, to, like not teach French. So that's a very, very important language. The second thing I want to know is, is there any credence to the Russian claims that Ukraine was shelling, dumbass, because there was, I believe, a separatist movement. And then it's a it's three part question, How deep is this separatist movement in those regions Donbas and Lugansk? Is it as widespread as the Russian propaganda machine wants to make it or is it as faint as the West is? Probably somewhere in the middle. But I'm trying to clear. So just to reiterate, it was Donbas shelled by the Ukrainian government. Were there laws passed against Russian language speakers and how deep is this so-called separatist movement or is there one?
Ivan: It started in Donbas, because I published my book about regional conflicts and divisions in Ukraine in 2006, before this conflict started, in which I said that there was a real possibility that Ukraine could face a breakup of a country, basically a separatist division in Ukraine in particular by looking to separatist traditions in Ukraine, which identified were Crimea and Donbas, based on my research, based on public opinion surveys, which show that there was absolute majority support for joining Russia in Crimea, in the 1990s it became smaller when Yanocovich was elected. But still a very significant majority supported joining Russia after the Maidan when, as it were, laws adopted against Russian language, a new government came to power, which was anti-Russian. So a similar situation happened in Donbas. So in Donbas I conducted, I mentioned this separatist that this was separatist region, a significant support for separatist even before Maidan, after the solution, dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was a significant support for separatism in Dombas in addition to Crimea and the same happened after the first Maidan in 2004, when also the Russian government was basically the place after they attempted to falsify the election results and they were based in this region and in the coalition particularly, was not elected president and he was actually in other positions that supported separatist autonomy for this region. And after the Maidan happened, I actually conducted a survey. I commissioned survey in Ukraine from a company which is most respectable, reputable company, sociological company in Ukraine, Institute of International Sociology, International Sociology Institute, and they conducted this survey for my research project, which I publish in Washington Post and presented in the American Political Science Association Conference, and published them in a book and in an article in peer reviewed journal, which actually was the most cited article in the Civil War in Donbas and Google Scholar.
This is just based on this, I can say that there was a significant support, a majority support for separatists in Donbas. But different forms of separatist not all of them support joining Russia, some support the independence of Donbas and many Ukrainians supported in Donbas support the autonomy of this region within Ukraine. So this means there was public support for separatist in Donbas.
Even so this was denied by the media, but by politicians there was clear evidence that Donbas was the only region in the Ukraine, the exception of Crimea, that had the majority support for separatist in different forms of separatist in this region, all other regions of Ukraine for minority support of separatist. So that's why Donbas is not accidental that war took place and the shelling of Donbas happened. And the most active fighting in Donbas happened in 2014 and 2015 between separatists and most of them were local citizens. I also got all the data but there were also Russian volunteers, but in addition to this, they obviously could not match Ukrainian military forces but Ukrainian military came very close to capturing, basically defeating all the separatist forces in summer of 2014. But then the Russians covertly deployed their military to Donbas to support separatist.
They did not recognize this publicly but all the evidence suggests that there were Russian military forces, just few, I think it was maybe a few thousand Russian military forces. They were able to again push back Ukrainian forces and kill many Ukrainian soldiers and members of parliamentary battalions, and they were able basically to establish de facto independence of most of the Donbas separatist regions. They were not recognized by Russia because Russia still publicly recognized them as Ukrainian, part of Ukraine, but it supported separatists. And then after a second attempt by Ukrainian forces to capture Donbas in 2015, Russia again deployed military forces covertly and was able to encircle Ukrainian forces and after this, Ukrainian government had to sign Minsk agreements in which they basically agree under pressure from Russian military, pressure from Russia up to resolve basically defeat from Russia near defeat.
They signed the agreement to basically give autonomy to Donbas and independence of Donbas within Ukraine. So basically Donbas would become a region with their own government, with their own militia, basically, they alone persecute the justice system and so on, but still nominally was in Ukraine. So this was a possible way to resolve this conflict.
But Zelensky, when he came to power, he was elected based on peace, a promise of peaceful resolution of this conflict. So he said that he would go to Russia to meet with anybody just to make peace in Ukraine. And he was elected mostly by people who were from eastern Ukraine. And from southern Ukraine, many of whom were Russian, not actually supporting joining Russia, but they wanted to become better relations with Russia and they voted for him and he got elected against their home President Poroshenko, who was very, kind of, hard line nationalistic, very belligerent supporting war with Russia and so on.
Using all this, the language Ukraine as Zelensky, was actually opposite here, basically saying that it is necessary to respect all languages, the Russian language. It is necessary to have peace with Russia. With Russia. So this actual election was given hope that you could make again possible the position of this country come afterwards. There was a meeting between Zelensky and Putin with the leaders of France and Germany in Paris in which there was agreement. Basically to try to diffuse this conflict and implement the Minsk agreement, which was a resolution of how to implement this summit. Basically, Zelensky put in agreed that there would be a withdrawal of of a military from frontline in order to diffuse. It was agreed that Ukrainian forces would be and then the separatist forces would be withdrawn from the line of, basically, combat. And this led to the reduction of shelling. Well, for one year, maybe two years. But then Zelensky changed his position, he became, again, very radical.
He started to advocate for military takeover of Donbas and this happened after he visited Donbas and the Far-Right Nazi organization linked to Azov (Batallion), told him basically that they would not leave this region. They threatened him that he would be dismissed from the presidency or even killed if there would be peace with Russia. So he had to change his policy.
He became this new Poroshenko, very anti-Russian and starting to support not only the kind of military takeover of Donbas by force, but also military takeover of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia. So this led to intensification of conflict between Russia and Ukraine and Russian supported separatists. Even so, there were no separatist military forces in the Donbas until 2022 and with exception of this two short Russian military interventions in 2014 and 2015 and there was increased shelling shortly before the war started, but the shelling of Donbas was not compatible in any form in scope to what happened in 2014 and 2015.
There was an increase in shelling, but there was no evidence that Ukrainian forces wanted to capture Donbas or take it back from the separatist supported by Russia. Even so, the Russian government claims that there was such evidence. There is no such evidence which I examined or reliable evidence. And the shelling was significant, but it was not comparable to what was before and in no way comparable to what happened after the Russian invasion of Donbas. Because now Donbas is a main area of battle between Russia and Ukraine.
Rik: Well, yeah, now that's but I mean, just the, you know, him going down there, meeting with those people and then, you know, trying to to get it back and then shelling. That's not the best political move, right? If you're trying to make peace. But I'm confused by that, right? Like, why, why, why start doing that? You know, like, does that make sense to you with that?
Ivan: Yes, because here, basically, Zelensky is what I call a weak president. He'sjust placed based on president because he was elected after he became very popular Ukrainian television after the television show in which he played a very kind of stoic president of which he now became basically after or to present himself after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, basically supporting ordinary people, becoming very tough again and so on.So, you know, this this is the same as the Zelensky who played such president in this fictional movie, which got him elected as president of Ukraine. But in fact, he was very weak. And even then, even kind of as a leader, because he was elected not only on his own, based on his own popularity, he was promoted by an oligarch who was very powerful who owned television channel in which this to ensure Zelensky was basically backed by oligarch to the presidency of Ukraine. So he was already a client of this oligarch so he was elected to basically not only become president, but also to support the economic interests of these oligarchs, the problems.
Actually, recently even investigated in the United States for corruption by here he bought a lot of property for money from his bank, which he had laundered from Ukraine in Cleveland and in Texas, he built lot of factories, these buildings and steel mills and so on in Texas and Cleveland in Ohio and now the FBI investigated him. So he was in very hot water. He supported Zelensky and Zelensky became his president. But after the election, Zelensky became actually more influenced by the United States and mostly by the far-right, who threatened him publicly if he would make a deal with Russia. So again, he basically caved to such pressure and other friends. He is not very strong, because if he was actually the was leader of Ukraine, he wouldn’t just do this evil because he had a popular mandate, he had 73% support of Ukrainians, but he basically was set and he felt that if more than just to oppose far-right, who could have shot him, or tried to overthrow him.
And there was a real possibility of this because they attacked his office. They put a swastika on his office just one year ago. They threatened him publicly to get him, hang him in Kiev, if he would make a deal with Russia, openly without any consequences and basically the police stood by. So this means a few thousand people who have no power, they are not elected, but they have power to overthrow the Ukrainian president. This is why this was very dangerous. And the U.S. government also did not because the US government had ways to influence Zelensky. And they could tell him basically to try to make a peace deal. But they told him the opposite. And when this impeachment happened in the United States, there was a video and the famous case of a phone call between Donald Trump and Zelensky. What surprised a lot of people actually about this in Ukraine, when this phone call cassette was released, was that Zelensky was on this phone call. He was again very kind of deferring to Trump. So he was like, I say, all of this in danger. Trump said this was not like a talk between two leaders of countries. But Zelensky was basically told to do this well, all this kind of appease Trump by giving him everything. Like I said, this talk basically kind of to be liked by Trump and not to be kind of a leader to preserve this kind of independence. And that's why this was a shock to many people that Zelensky basically was kind of, not the real leader of Ukraine, but was basically like by temperament, basically trying to please him on any and all fronts This happened the same with Biden when Biden was elected. So Zelensky tried to please him.
He, one way to do this he also closed the opposition television channels. Because they were supported by a variety of Russian parties, So and he and Zelensky decided to please Biden. They give him a present by closing opposition channels, which I think are the Russian political party, which was considered Russian but actually did not support the Russian invasion. But they are located close relations with Russia and peace with Russia, which was considered against appeasement. And now this leader of this party is arrested by Zelensky and put in prison. So that's why, like I said, I was telling my students, even before this war started, I was saying to my students that Ukrainian politics is more interesting than Hollywood movies because of this. This is like a reality television show.
Rik: It's like the reality is that any time someone has a little bit of common sense, there's like, well, all right, there's a way we can cut a deal to get us out of here and be free. Someone comes in and kind of fucks it up. Some are, there's like 17 different sides. You've got the far right, you've got oligarchs, you've got people that like, but we kind of like Russia. Let's keep them, you know, let's kind of let's get closer to them and then also appease the West. You have, you know, a president this weak that's trying to please everybody. But he, you know, he's kind of corrupted as well. So this is almost like the perfect storm of FUBAR, right? It's just not good.
How do we get out of here? How do we cut a deal? You have the fighting intensifying. And to be fair and to be honest with you, I was obsessed with this in the beginning and it started to consume me. I started to really pay, I feel a little bit too much attention to this. And that wasn't it's not good for my mental health. So I kind of have been dropping by. But it is my understanding the fighting is intensified. It's getting more bloody. I think the Russian advance has stalled to a certain degree. Am I correct in that assumption?
Ivan: So my thinking is this: Russia, where they generally think, okay, I think that you have to do this very fast. So they wanted to invade Ukraine from different directions and in mass in Kiev are, also from the south and from Donbas and Kharkiv area, from the east. And as a specific, I think their goal was not to capture Ukraine, not to occupy the entire Ukraine but to force regime change from a pro-Western government to pro-Russian government.
They wanted to change the government basically, if the Ukrainian government they expect that maybe Zelensky will not fight because Russia has military advantage. So they maybe believe that he or his many people would not fight and they basically would be able to easily replace the government in Ukraine, in Kiev, this set of Russian military forces nearby was they expected Zelensky would agree to demands by Russia to have neutral status for Ukraine to basically give the Russian language official status. to ban, de-Nazi-fy Ukrainian politics, which again, Russia uses this broadly, but this could have been done by limiting private organizations and policies. So, Russia also demanded demilitarization of Ukraine and the Commission of Independence of Donbas within the boarders of Donbas. So this was the issue which was not accepted by Ukraine.
But Zelensky initially kind of agreed to discuss his demands and there was a real possibility of peace deal between Russia and Ukraine on the not on all of these points, but Zelensky basically agreed for Ukraine to become neutral country, non-NATO membership in exchange for a I think, from the Western countries in Russia that they would accept neutral status of Ukraine. There would be no invasion of Ukraine. And so there was this possibility to do this and discuss the status of Donbas separately. But as this agreement was broken after a visit by a British prime minister who told Zelensky not to sign any peace deal with Russia and Zelensky hasn't changed this completely. And again, his policy became totally opposed to any peace deal.He believes that he could defeat Russia. And after this happened, Russian removed their forces from the Kiev area and the northern part of Ukraine and this was presented in the West as basically a defeat of Russia, that the Russian forces were defeated by Ukrainian forces. And what does that again, what's the evidence of this?
Different sources, hundreds of videos pulled from different sources. This was not the military defeat of Russia. Russia obviously had opposition to the most significant fighting in the Kiev area. But Russia was losing their forces not because of, again, Ukrainian counter offensive in this region, but because they, I don't believe that they occupied this region because this was not a very pro-Russian region. It was an anti-Russian region. So they catastrophized as agents to put the pressure on Zelensky and his government, basically by not immediately taking Kiev, but trying to encircle or just put pressure on Zelensky but they failed to do this. They moved their forces from Crimea and from other regions of Ukraine to Donbas. So Donbas became now the main battlefield between Russia and Ukraine.
Now Russia's goal was to encircle Ukrainian forces in the Donbas and they started to do this and they're doing this slowly. So this kind of not stalemate, but still a stalemate but actually a slow advance by Russia. I argue. But they managed to take already a large part of Donbas and they do this again, we still have advanced, but a very slow advance, but now they rely not on the tactic which was used as a first base, when they just launched their forces in Ukraine, they have occupied a large part of Ukraine without much fighting. Before the fighting started, near Kiev and other regions. So they initially were able to take over a large part of southern Ukraine. But in Donbas there was much much more significant Ukrainian military presence forces because of the war between the separatists and the Ukrainian government for eight years. So there was a significant military presence in Ukraine and forces there are our most professional and most committed to fight this. Russians were all already built defensive positions, so now Russia relies not only on all these kinds of tactics, which is a tactic it had in the first days of war.
They now use artillery and heavy, heavy bombardment of these areas. So now there are very significant losses from Ukrainian forces, from artillery bombardment by the Russian forces each day. Zelensky recently stated that there were, each day in Donbas, about 100 Ukrainian soldiers killed and 500 wounded each day just in Donbas. And there were significant Russian military casualties.But I don't think that they are similar to what all of this media says or what the government wants to say, but are significant casualties. And now Russia tries to minimize the casualties by using their media and bombardment. So they would just try to flatten all these areas which they had once. And do this very slowly.But as they are advancing in this area and they're able to capture some towns in Donbas in particular they were able to capture Mariupol, which is the largest port city in the south of Ukraine which is located in Donbas. So there is still a focus by Russia. And I think that this means that Russia is still very likely to advance. They want to take control over all Donbas, not just the regions which were controlled by separatists before this war, but the entire territory of Donbas. And this is now their main goal. But if there would be no peace agreement, the Russian forces might, after Donbas such as they would be able to defeat or take control over Donbas, occupy and take Donbas.
They might go to other regions of Ukraine in the south, maybe Odessa, maybe Zaporizhzhia if there would be no peace agreement. So this would be very difficult, you know, but that's why it's very sure, I think that the Russians also might help to have a peace agreement. But now they are, I think their plan is to annex Donbas and other regions of Ukraine which are occupied by Russia or which would be still occupied by Russia in the future, if the war would continue.
Rik: Yeah. And that's kind of what I was wondering. What's going on here is we got to make peace profitable. It’s stupid. It's terrible. We have to figure out a way to make this profitable. Right. Like, I think if we could get, if Russia could get Ukraine not to join NATO and to be a neutral country potentially, I mean, now they'd be like, you're going to have to demilitarize because like you, we're at war and we don't like this. We want to win. Then I think we could stop the bloodshed. But if not and if I'm Putin? I mean, you know, I'm a huge conquest person just because of the history. So that you take this with. I would be like, I’m taking the whole thing. Would it be incredibly expensive? I don't know if Russia could, you know, potentially pull that off or hold it and you'd lose all I mean, they've lost quite a bit of prestige in the the international community because of this.
But, you know, let's not forget that the United States is just as guilty.We definitely, the whole Iraq thing. That was definitely an invasion of a sovereign nation. And it was. We broke international law and we did the same exact thing. We've done that hundreds of times, not maybe hundreds of times. We've done that quite a bit. So it's a very complex issue. I really hope that the light bulbs will turn on in our leaders' heads and we'll realize that we got to make peace profitable. It's been a long time since we've had two powers going at each other. And I mean, Russia's definitely a world power and a nuclear power. And I think that and the institutional memory of the World War Two veterans is leaving us.
People don't spend a lot of time buried in textbooks about war. And I feel like we've forgotten that. And that is what scares me. We've also forgotten the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how that devastated Japan was and the sheer heartbreak. You can read all about it. You can look at pictures. You can look at the Pacific campaigns of when we were Island hopping. You look at the atrocities in the Vietnam War that were perpetrated by, you know, our soldiers. We can look at it like war is terrible, it puts people in a terrible place and scars them for life. And until we can figure out, you know, how to talk to each other and how to honor what we mean, what we say so we mean in all of the agreements that we put in place.
I don't know if we're, you know, if we will ever see an end to it, but I really I appreciate the work that you've done in this covering the history and the the politics behind it to to shed some light as to which way, you know, which way people should have gone, which people which in the way things are going. And you know, being able to foresee the beginnings of a war, right. Just in the language and in the papers and and what's going on like that is a very important gift that you're bringing to the public. And I really want to thank you. You know, people like you are incredibly important. And the knowledge that you're sharing with me. I can't say that I'm hopeful now. I don't know if I'm more hopeful than I was before, but it's an important message.
I want to be respectful of your time. Please tell people where they can buy your work. Where do you do you have a, I think you have a Twitter. Shout of your social media .And then also, when can we expect the new book?
Ivan: Thank you, this was a very good conversation. And you know a lot of Ukraine and about the war between Russia and Ukraine. So you have a lot of interest in this topic. The questions were very, very good. And people who are interested in my books can find them on Amazon or any other online. I published another book about the history of Ukraine on US Academic Press about Canada and the United States as well. They are available on Amazon and different other places online. And my new book, actually, I have one book which will be published by the US Academic Press, but it would take a few years to publish this because it's a general book about Ukraine and another book which as I mentioned about different conflicts in Ukraine, including Russia-Ukraine war, would be again would be available.
I have my research about the war between Russia and Ukraine completed and then it would take some time to publish. And then finally I also plan to publish a book about the Maidan massacre because I have already completed all my research and it's available also on my academic websites. My papers are available for free for download on my academic website and I also have a YouTube website which contains a lot of evidence like testimonies and videos from the Maidan massacre and my interviews, television interviews and other interviews. So if people are interested, they can find this information on my Twitter and Facebook accounts are also publicly available for anybody who would be interested.
Rik: We'll post all the links in the show notes. Ivan, thank you so much. As soon as the other book comes out, let us know. We'll get you here again. It's been a pleasure we'll talk to you later, my man. Thank you so much.
Ivan: Okay, Thank you.
