Fascinating read: In-depth story of Ukrainian president's fall from grace. Not exactly a CIA plot.

[uhnope]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/world/europe/ukraine-leader-was-defeated-even-before-he-was-ousted.html?_r=0

A combination of pro-EU protests occupying the main square, rumors that the protesters might soon receive serious weapons, chaos during changing events, and incompetence/corruption at the highest levels led to Yanukovych suddenly without any supporters, without any security protecting him or even his house. He now lives in Russia.

Interviews with the main players.

Sorry, Nuland Conspiracy Buffs: not a CIA plot in sight, actually. It's more the old Eastern Europe tale of a cynical security-state apparatus that recognized when a leader was suddenly powerless (and that knew the leader was beholden to another country, anyway.)

Key line: "Few outside the Russian propaganda bubble ever seriously entertained the Kremlin’s line" (about a western plot) --but somehow, many Putin explainers repeat it here on a regular basis

Ukraine Leader Was Defeated Even Before He Was Ousted

Ashen-faced after a sleepless night of marathon negotiations, Viktor F. Yanukovych hesitated, shaking his pen above the text placed before him in the chandeliered hall. Then, under the unsmiling gaze of European diplomats and his political enemies, the beleaguered Ukrainian president scrawled his signature, sealing a deal that he believed would keep him in power, at least for a few more months.

But even as Mr. Yanukovych sat down with his political foes at the presidential administration building on the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 21, his last authority was fast draining away. In a flurry of frantic calls to opposition lawmakers, police officials and security commanders were making clear that they were more worried about their own safety than protecting Mr. Yanukovych and his government.

By that evening, he was gone, evacuated from the capital by helicopter, setting the stage for the most severe bout of

Russia has attributed Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster to what it portrays as a violent, “neo-fascist” coup supported and even choreographed by the West and dressed up as a popular uprising. The Kremlin has cited this assertion, along with historical ties, as the main justification for its annexation of Crimea in March and its subsequent support for an armed revolt by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s industrial heartland in the east.

Few outside the Russian propaganda bubble ever seriously entertained the Kremlin’s line. But almost a year after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, questions remain about how and why it collapsed so quickly and completely.

[Duckhunter935]

1. I posted this the other day

and surprise, the Putin people avoided it like the plague. Not a post at all from them

[uhnope]

3. sorry to miss your thread. But looks like I got one

Putin explainer, I mean

[jakeXT]

2. It's called NED, the CIA would never go in as the CIA

How many Americans could identify the National Endowment for Democracy? An organization which often does exactly the opposite of what its name implies. The NED was set up in the early 1980s under President Reagan in the wake of all the negative revelations about the CIA in the second half of the 1970s. The latter was a remarkable period. Spurred by Watergate-the Church Committee of the Senate, the Pike Committee of the House and the Rockefeller Commission, created by the president, were all busy investigating the CIA. Seemingly every other day there was a new headline about the discovery of some awful thing, even criminal conduct, the CIA had been mixed up in for years. The Agency was getting an exceedingly bad name, and it was causing the powers-that-be much embarrassment.
Something had to be done. What was done was not to stop doing these awful things. Of course not. What was done was to shift many of these awful things to a new organization, with a nice sounding name-the National Endowment for Democracy. The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities.
It was a masterpiece. Of politics, of public relations and of cynicism. Thus it was that in 1983, the National Endowment for Democracy was set up to "support democratic institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts". Notice the "nongovernmental"-part of the image, part of the myth. In actuality, virtually every penny of its funding comes from the federal government, as is clearly indicated in the financial statement in each issue of its annual report. NED likes to refer to itself as an NGO (non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a GO.
Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, was quite candid when he said in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/National%20EndowmentDemo.html