[Voice-Over] The images of the Maidan revolution went around the world in February 2014.
Millions of demonstrators went to the streets all over Ukraine.
They demanded an approach to the European Union and the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovitch.
In December 2013, much to the surprise of the international community,
he went back on his election campaign promise to sign an association agreement with the EU.
[Gunshots, shouting] After months of demonstrations state security forces violently beat down protesters.
And at least 80 people died.
As a result, Yanukovytch fled to Russia.
[Danya Lubkin] Our revolution was about fighting dictatorship.
[Andrey N. Ilarionov] It was not an issue of whatever nationalism.
Because there were Ukrainians,
Uranian-speaking Ukrainians,
Russian-speaking Ukrainians,
Russian-speaking Russians.
Moreover there were some Georgians, who came from Georgia, Belarusians,
and some Russians who came from Russia.
to Maidan to defend this cause against the corrupt government.
[Maryan Zablotskyy] To me, the most surprising moments of Maidan were the most tragic ones.
When people were actually shot at and still did not step back.
[Demyd Maiornykov] The people started to believe in themselves.
And the mentalities have been changing.
They realized that they're capable of implementing reforms.
[Voice-Over] In the wake of the protests, Ukrainians destroyed statues and symbols of the former Soviet Union across the country.
[Crowd cheering]
[Danya Lubkin] It was so obvious for younger people that it is weird
to have a monuments of a person who actually killed Ukrainians as well.
It's like having a monument of Hitler inside of Poland, for example.
[Demyd Maiornykov] So that was a true spiritual moment, but of course
having so many dead people is still very painful.
Even if you walk down the Maidan now, you will see a lot of places from the bullet holes.
[Tom G. Palmer] The Kremlin lost their man in Ukraine. They picked someone too greedy.
They could have still had their influence there.
But he wanted to be as rich as Putin.
But you can't do that in Ukraine.
There's not all the oil money.
[Voice Over] Russian state media was quick to claim that a coup d'état had taken place in Kiev.
[Tom Palmer] That was no coup. The president abandoned the country after signing a political agreement
for new elections and a peaceful resolution of this dispute.
He left.
So it was no coup. The president abandoned the country.
A second thing: There was not a fascist coup, a nazi coup.
Although: There were fascists and arguably even Nazis in Ukraine.
But these are not the people who were involved in forming the new government.
There is simply nothing to that.
But it is very effective to portray this as some kind of fascist government.
They do not have a nazi government in Kiev.
But that is what you would think if you only listened to RT, and Sputnik, and other Kremlin state propaganda.
[Danya Lubkin] When Yanukovytch resigned there was huge celebration.
But afterwards there was coming to all an understanding that we had a war right now.
We would wake up in the morning, pick up, play TV, and it said there was Russian helicopters on the Crimea.
And then in some months there were the Russians in the Donbas catching our cities.
[Andrei N. Illarionov] They removed Putin's puppet Yanukovytch from power.
That was enough.
That was why according to Mr Putin those people should be punished.
[Voice-Over] To maintain Russian influence in Ukraine, Russian troops landed on the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea
and began to occupy the island, whilst the Maidan riots were still ongoing.
On March 16th 2014 the annexation the Crimea by the Russian Federation was confirmed in a questionable referendum.
Most international spectators maintained that the 96.77 percent vote to join Russia was a result of manipulation and intimidation.
[Mikhailo Lavrovsky] There are a lot of people in Crimea who really want to be a part of Russia.
But it's not 94 percent, maybe 55.
[Tom Palmer] It's impossible that 97 percent would have voted to join Russia.
This is completely obviously phony. and at the point of a gun.
But had there been an authentic referendum, it's not really possible to predict what would have happened.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] An election is unpredictable.
If they are free.
If they are free, they are unpredictable.
If they are predictable, they are not free.
[Voice-Over] The war also escalated in the eastern Ukrainian territories around Donetsk and Luhansk.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] The long term aim of Putin is very clear.
He wanted to control Ukraine through these "republics".
[Tom Palmer] In Donetsk, Borodai, the prime minister, was from Moscow.
[unclear] Igor Girkin was from Moscow.
Both of them connected to Konstantin Malofeev, who is one of the cronies of Putin.
And a big advocate of rebuilding the Russian empire. He's very clear and outspoken about this.
So this was not just a indigenous movement of Russian speakers.
This was very much influenced from Russia, including all the people, the weapons, the arms.
[Danya Lubkin] This a real war, real ongoing war.
Like every day. every single day someone is dying and some one is displaced.
We have a lot of refugees. Like three million are displaced right now in Ukraine.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] It is important to know that the operation against Ukraine was under preparation by Putin for at least ten years prior.
Or eleven years prior to the actual attack.
[Voice-Over] The Kremlin's plan for the invasion of Ukraine can be tracked back to 2008.
For example, "Operation Clockwork Orange".
A landing operation, in which crucial infrastructure of Crimea, airports, ports, and key points in the road network, would be taken by the Russian naval infantry.
Another piece of evidence:
Russian army combat medals engraved with the date February 20th, 2014.
One day before the then President Yanukovych actually left Ukraine.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] It seems to me , this was a long process.
But at the very end it's absolutely clear: Both, Crimea/Sevastopol and Donbas are occupied territories.
And sooner or later [they] will be returned back to Ukraine.
Just no doubt.
After the second World War there was a very important principle of international law:
Inalienability of international borders.
[Tom Palmer] Borders do not change because of conquest and annexation.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] And it had been formulated and signed in many, many documents.
And Russia is one of the participants of all those documents.
[Voice-Over] Illarionov's assessment that Russia will return the Crimea appears rather unrealistic when taking a look at Russian media.
They maintain a strict anti-Western and anti-liberal line.
[Tom Palmer] When you turn on Russian TV, it looks like you have a wide array, like Germany or America.
All these different tastes and talkshows and spirit mediums on TV and whatever.
They're all the same.
They all are broadcasting the same view. All of them are under control of the state.
"Russia has a unique culture, standing alone against an entire world of enemies against them."
And that one man is holding them at bay.
And that's Vladimir Putin.
[Danya Lubkin] Russia is always trying put out information that we will surrender in five days.
Like: "Your people are fighting for nothing, you will be dead and your country will be under Russian occupation."
[Voice-Over] Russia's rhetoric and military aggression against Ukraine are also problematic in a historical context.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the US and Russia, as the USSR's successor state, guaranteed the sovereignty of Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum.
In return, those countries abandoned their nuclear weapons, inherited from the USSR..
Russia often justifies its aggressive foreign policy with the growth of NATO after the communist collapse.
[Tom Palmer] There was a big movement for unification and one of the many questions was:
Will this successor stat will be a member of NATO or not?
East Germany was not and West Germany was. So what about the unified Germany?
There is evidence that there was some discussion with Gorbachev, head of the Soviet Union at the time,
that NATO would absorb or come to include the eastern part of Germany,
and the unified Germany would be a member of NATO, but not go further.
Move forward and the Soviet Union collapses, and the Baltic countries become independent. So there's no Soviet Union, no treaty with it, but possibly a personal understanding with Gorbachev.
2004 seven from the former eastern bloc, such as Slovenia, joined NATO.
I don't think it could be interpreted as an aggressive move towards Russia.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] There was not a single word from Moscow.
Something that Moscow would disapprove or say: "Okay we don't like it."
[Tom Palmer] People went and [unclear] said: "We were promised NATO would not extend further."
I don't think that that's well substantiated. But there was discussion in 1990 about this question.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] It is very well known that in the year 2000, 2001, 2002 Mr Putin several times said both privately and publicly:
That the purpose of the Russian government is to join NATO.
[Voice-Over] Ukraine is not the first country that has been attacked by Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Moscow has used its military also against Chechnya and Georgia to consolidate its power.
As the war in Ukraine continues, it presents great challenges for the government and the population.
The initial euphoria about the success of the Maidan protests has been replaced with a sobering reality.
[Danya Lubkin] After Maidan, we thought that everything will be changed dramatically and drastically in a short period of time.
But we see that our government is not really so fast-changeable.
[Maryan Zablotskyy] Ukraine is now officially by far the poorest country in Europe.
[Mariia Chaplia] And these people who are in power now: They are pretending they are making reforms.
The problem is that they want to get money from the EU. They want to get money from the US.
And that's why they pretend they are doing reforms.
But they are doing reforms just for the reforms, not for the change itself.
[Maryan Zablotskyy] The problem is that we are still living in a quasi communist society, under which government redistributes almost 50% of GDP through taxes and puts a burden on almost every imaginable type of economic activity.
[Mariia Chaplia] I think the situation in Ukraine is, honestly speaking, becoming worse every day.
[Voice-Over] Not only Ukraine has economic problems.
The decline in oil prices and trade margins is steadily worsening the situation for the Russian economy.
[Tom Palmer] Maybe in about two years they'll be broke. They'll run out of money.
Just as the Soviet Union ran out of money. while this is going to provoke a crisis.
One way to deal with that is to do something dramatic that builds up the Russian nation and rebuilds the Russian empire.
And there's nothing like conquering territory or "recovering the Russian lands".
[Andrei Iliiarinov] I think the number one target today is definitely Belarus.
[Tom Palmer] I think the Belarusian government is aware of this, shutting down the Sputnik broadcasting in Minsk and so on.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] Belarus does not belong to any alliance. This is very attractive for Putin.
In his concept, Belarus is a part… Belarusians are a part the Russian people — along with the Ukrainians.
[Tom Palmer] Just as in the 1930s, the national socialist regime used the German diaspora in Poland, the Baltic and elsewhere as a justification for their imperial expansion, we're really seeing the same playbook.
[Voice-Over] An indication of this is the freshly deployed 1st Guards Tank Army.
A large mechanized army stationed on the western border of Russia.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] And the location of all these units, all those tank divisions of the 1st Guard Army…
Oh, big surprise. All of them on the highways leading to Belarus.
[Tom Palmer] After that, the scenario starts to get even more scary.
A much bigger invasion of Ukraine.
Attempt to go through Mariopol, Odessa, take all of the Black Sea coast, maybe even go take Kiev.
That would probably be very bloody.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] The Ukrainians really improved very substantially the quality of their own troops.
Their ability to fight, their spirit is very high.
And that is why I don't think that Putin would organize a new large scale advance on Ukraine.
Small skirmishes: Almost definitely.
[Tom Palmer] After that it gets even more bloody and terrible because now we're talking about the Baltic countries.
[Andrei Iliiarinov] It's quite risky. Because NATO is a sleeping dragon, but still a dragon.
[Tom Palmer] Now you have this big gambling. You roll the dice: Will NATO respond or not?
[Andrei Iliiarinov] So that is why it is rather hard to imagine that Putin would risk so much for almost nothing.
[Tom Palmer] Putin is not going to retire and go live in a country house or some place.
He'll die in office.
Once you're in the t position you can't just retire. Because whoever succeeds you will imprison you.
And so he knows that. Well, he has to do thing to constantly replenish and renew his popularity.
And war is a very good way, as politicians all over the world have discovered for millennia.
[Voice-Over] A dead-end situation.
Apparently, economic or military measures cannot fix the basic issues.
All that remains is hope that thing will turn out for the best.
[Demyd Maiornykov] One cannot say that corruption has been completely eliminated within the country.
But the [unclear], as police for example, it's way much less than it used to be.
[Maria Chaplia] It's very hard to change the mindset. I truly believe that it's almost impossible.
And only this new generation, which was born in the independent Ukraine can change Ukraine.
[Demyd Maiornykov] I can see lots of youth activists working in this field and fighting for their rights, implementing some reforms in the country.
Even though they're young, they have passion, they have energy. And, yeah, it makes me happy.
[Maryan Zablotskyy] To me, the European Union brings one of the greatest freedoms that has ever been.
Freedom of movement, free trade, freedom of goods and freedom of capital.
This single market is the biggest freedom are that has ever been created.
And I do not understand why some countries want to leave it.
[Mariia Chaplia] We have to forget about all these problems between our governments and after all we are al world citizens.
We have to find a common ground.
[Tom Palmer] I would like to see much more trade with Russia.
I think that a better approach rather than punishing Russia trough sanctions is to say:
"You wann come here. We can arrange visa for your travel."
Open up our opportunities so Russians don't feel bottled up and surrounded by enemies.
[Maryan Zablotskyy] The more freedom you have, the more wealth you have. That is a proven thing.
You can always put any sort of liberty index, either "Economic Freedom Index" or "Ease Of Doing Business Ranking" with GDP per capita and see a very strong correlation.
[Mariia Chaplia] What they have tod is to focus on internal affairs.
And make Ukraine such a powerful and prosperous state that people in Crimea and eastern Ukraine they like to be a part of Ukraine.
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