IMHO, geopolitical angle can not be taken one second from the view. It started with Otto Von Bismarck and his notion that Russia with Ukraine is global power and Russia without Ukraine is regional power. He provided blueprint how to split Russia soil into two bleeding parts hating each other. It took almost 150 years, but it's being done.
Global powers are like battleships, not speedboats, they need time to adjust course.
Maidan 2004 and Maidan 2014 belong to two historical eras.
In 2004, Emperor was still under illusion Siberia could be snatched from Russia, hence caution not to prematurely wake up the bear.
The watershed was 2008, the moment World realized the Emperor is naked. Economic collapse was merely external sign of it. That was the moment Emperor realized that New American century is a pipe dream and got nervous, like gambler on meth.
In 2014. Emperor goes for broke, plays va banque. That's why snipers were hired to create havoc on Maidan, that's why an airliner was taken down, that's why the parade of fools can be seen daily, from Victoria Nuland to press conferences hosted by an airhead while Golfer in Chief takes another vacation. Dangerous times.
Bismarck is not an authority on Ukraine and her history. This myth of “brotherhood” was rebuked over and over again, before and after Bismarck. (From Sahaidachnyi, Vyhovsky, Doroshenko, Mazepa, Orlyk to Shevchenko, Hrushevskyi, Dontsov, Petliura...)
Geopolitics, while impressive in its scope, sometimes can’t control simple but important stuff like the general mood of a population. The dollars spent on democracy groups is wasted if there’s no genuine discontent or grievances against the Chief Crook of the country. Whether the State Department or CIA was supporting it, protests against Yanukovich were going to happen.
I agree to look into a a black box and not to take things at face value. But then how deep am I supposed to look before getting diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic? If you’re not going with the widely accepted version that it was the Russians who shot the plane down, but going a level deeper, that it was Ukrainians/Americans who did it to frame the Russians, why stop at this level and not ask who framed the Ukrainians who tried to frame the Russians, and so on. Also, sometimes, things “just happen”
Just wondering, do you think the protests in Ferguson is a Russian FSB operation, payback for Ukraine?
Must be the "f**k Russia" bit at the end :)))