DISINFO: Western double standards ignore coups in Belarus and Ukraine, and popular will in Crimea
SUMMARY
For Western double standards, the opinion of 2.5 million people in Crimea is worthless, it seems. We are reaching a point where even such flagrant actions as the coup attempt in Belarus or the Western-backed coup that took place in Ukraine are silenced by their press and political class. It is remarkable that such indignant actions as the recently divulged attempt to organise a coup in Belarus and murder the president of this country are not condemned by the Western community.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about the illegal annexation of Crimea, Euromaidan and Belarus.
No international body recognises the so-called referendum in Crimea. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled “Territorial integrity of Ukraine”, stating that the referendum in Crimea was not valid and could not serve as a basis for any change in the status of the peninsula. On 17 December 2018, the UN General Assembly confirmed its non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea.
Contrary to the claim, mass protests against the governments of Ukraine in 2013 and of Belarus in 2020 were not destabilisation operations orchestrated from abroad. The demonstrations that began in Kyiv in November 2013 were a result of the Ukrainian people's frustration with former President Yanukovych's last minute U-turn when, after seven years of negotiation, he refused to sign the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement and halted progress towards Ukraine's closer relationship with the EU as a result of Russian pressure.
Protests in Belarus erupted to contest the results of the presidential election in Belarus on the 9th of August 2020, which were not monitored by independent experts, and are largely considered fraudulent by both international observers and a large part of the Belarusian society. See here about the EU reaction.
On 17 April 2021, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko alleged that Belarusian and Russian intelligence services had thwarted a US-backed assassination attempt against him, but no evidence was presented to back the claim.
See other examples in our database, such as claims that there was a coup in Kyiv in 2014, which led to the separation of Crimea and Donbas from Ukraine; that the Crimean issue is finally closed; that 96% of Crimean people wanted to rejoin Russia; that protests in Belarus were controlled by a primary American command centre in Warsaw; or that the West is ignoring the US attempted coup against Belarus.
This disinformation message appeared in the same TV programme as the claim that “Russophobia and baseless accusations are a daily occurrence because the West fears Russia”.