Was either of the two Ukrainian revolutions the result of a Western conspiracy?
Conspiracy theories abound in regard to both the Orange and the EuroMaidan revolutions, in part because Russian state media and the Yanukovych camp persist in trying to present them as American plots not reflecting the will of the Ukrainian people.
The Orange Revolution had generic similarities to other so-called “color revolutions” of the first decade of the 2000s, in particular in Serbia in 2000 and in Georgia in 2003, which used nonviolent resistance to overthrow corrupt political regimes, often in the aftermath of rigged elections. Western agencies had indeed been involved with funding the training of political activists in democratic political practices, including tactics of grassroots political campaigning and nonviolent resistance. Notably, members of the Ukrainian organization Pora studied the experience of similar radical student groups, like Otpor in Serbia and Kmara in Georgia. However, the foreign agencies in question, including Freedom House and USAID, as well as the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, did not initiate these programs just before the revolts with the specific goal of removing an unfriendly regime from power. For many years such agencies have funded various projects in these countries with the general aim of promoting democratic governance and developing the public sphere. Moreover, during the period leading up to the Orange Revolution, the bulk of funding for building political networks and hiring foreign political consultants came from domestic sources, namely opposition-friendly oligarchs.
In any case, Russia has reportedly spent much larger sums that the West in funding Yanukovych's electoral campaign and the counterprotests during the Orange Revolution, contributing an estimated US$300 million versus an alleged US$65 million from Western countries.11 Additionally, President Putin had campaigned openly on behalf of Yanukovych and had endorsed the latter 's fraudulent electoral win.
If the Orange Revolution can be portrayed somewhat credibly as a political project that opposition parties brought slowly to fruition with some assistance from abroad, it still took spectacular electoral fraud on the part of the governing authorities to cause the rebellion.
It is much more difficult to make a similar case for the EuroMaidan Revolution, which erupted spontaneously and caught the opposition parties and the West unprepared. Western and domestic opposition leaders often fell behind the rapid tempo of revolutionary events in the solutions they offered. Therefore, those seeking to present the EuroMaidan Revolution as a Western plot had to clutch at the most far-fetched conspiracy theories. The controversial American filmmaker Oliver Stone, for example, has advocated a theory emanating from the Yanukovych circle that “third-party” shooters were allegedly operating on the Maidan, killing both protesters and police in order to force a regime change. This theory insinuates that “CIA fingerprints" were all over the EuroMaidan.12 An opposing conspiracy theory has also been advanced by some in Ukraine, namely that the mysterious snipers belonged to the Russian special forces, who were attempting to provoke a violent crackdown on the protests. In fact, bullets recovered from the bodies came from various types of firearms, mostly standard police or military issue.What matters for the study of revolutions, however, is the big picture of a corrupt regime trying to restrict democracy and the willingness of disaffected citizens to engage in civil disobedience when faced with a particularly egregious subversion of the democratic process. It was beyond the power of any Western agency to bring hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to the Maidan and make them risk their lives by standing up to the venal governing elites. It is equally beyond the power of any Western organization to complete the revolution by building a democratic and prosperous Ukraine.