Global Research

Ukraine arrested some people on Monday who it claimed were scheming to provoke nationwide riots involving up to at least 5,000 people. They then declared that they’re investigating the detained for suspected ties to Russia.

This follows US-led Western allegations that Russia is supposedly plotting to carry out a “coup” in Ukraine.

The arrests also curiously came on the same day that the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council claimed that his country can’t implement the Minsk Accords that are nowadays enshrined in international law following a relevant UNSC Resolution out of fear that doing so “could lead to a very difficult internal situation” due to supposed popular outrage.

There’s some further background to all of this that the author explained in a recent series of analyses:

• 23 January: “What’s With All The Recent Ukrainian Coup Talk?”
• 23 January: “The US’ Anti-Chinese Deep State Faction Hates Ukraine’s Close Ties With China”
• 24 January: “Is The US Preparing To Sacrifice Zelensky In Order To Justify Russia’s Containment?”
• 28 January: “Who’s Lying About Ukraine This Time & Why: The Biden Administration Or CNN?”
• 29 January: “Zelensky’s Pushback Against Mainstream Media Panic Confirms US-Ukrainian Divisions”

To summarize, it’s actually the US and not Russia’s that’s plotting the Ukrainian President’s removal.

Having said that, there’s also no denying the existence of genuine grassroots resistance to that country’s increasingly authoritarian incumbent government. It’s “politically convenient” for the authorities to preemptively stop any protest movements and hint that they were “Russian-backed” regardless of whether they were genuine or actually US-backed. That enables Kiev to maintain publicly cordial relations with Washington in spite of unprecedentedly tense ties between them owing to the US’ efforts to provoke panic in that country for perception management purposes. This means that it’s unclear exactly who was really behind the supposedly planned “riots”.

It’s all but certain, however, that Russia didn’t play a role in orchestrating them.

The Eurasian Great Power is adamantly against the weaponization of protest movements since it regards such dynamics as inherently chaotic and therefore uncontrollable. Furthermore, its regional security interests have been threatened by such Color Revolutions five times since 2013, the latest of which was the failed Hybrid War of Terror on Kazakhstan. It’s therefore unbelievable that Russia, which can’t even preemptively avert such scenarios within its own unofficial so-called “sphere of influence”, would suddenly be able to mastermind the same in any other country, not to mention one as authoritarian as Ukraine presently is.

It simply doesn’t make sense to accuse Russia of involvement in the latest alleged plot.

Objective observers should therefore treat claims of Russia’s alleged involvement in any Ukrainian unrest with a pile of salt since there isn’t any credible reason why Moscow would do such a thing nor any precedent for suggesting that it’s even capable of trying. To the contrary, Russia resolutely opposes all weaponized protest movements (Color Revolutions) out of principle no matter where they occur, though it’s also openly sympathetic to the plight of Russian speakers and its co-ethnics in Ukraine who are currently being oppressed. That, however, doesn’t mean that it has any secret hand in organizing their protests. If anything, these were either genuine grassroots revolts or a US Color Revolution plot.

The second educated conjecture deserves a bit more elaboration in order to be better understood.

The US has a track record of successfully organizing Color Revolutions all across the world. It also has the socio-political infrastructure inside of Ukraine via US-led Western NGOs and related intelligence agencies (some of which are one and the same) to carry this out if it really wanted to. Regarding its motives, those were already explained in the hyperlinked analyses that were shared earlier in the present piece. In a nutshell, the anti-Russian “deep state” faction dislikes that Zelensky is getting cold feet about provoking Russia while the anti-Chinese faction hates his close economic ties with China. These factors combine to create “deep state” unity over the cause of his impending removal from office.

For these reasons, the detained are either genuine grassroots activists and/or US Color Revolutionaries.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld