Heavy Ukrainian losses in the South Eastern Donbas and Zaporizhzhia regions have reignited discussions on whether the Russian intervention in Ukraine, which began in February of 2022, was justified or not. Western media has portrayed the intervention as an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign democratic nation. However, is that the case?

While the Russian military’s intervention in Ukraine started in 2022, the conflict itself actually began in 2014 with the coup known as the “Revolution of Dignity,” otherwise known as “Euromaidan.” What the mainstream media called a peaceful, pro-democracy protest was in fact a violent overthrow of the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych, the then-president of Ukraine. During the revolution, armed, far-right militants stormed government buildings, attacked police, and forced a regime change, which was all organized and orchestrated by Western governments and NGOs. 

In fact, the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S. government-funded organization, funneled millions of dollars to Ukrainian opposition groups both before and during the protests. According to Paul Blumenthal’s article in Huffpost, in 2013 alone, NED allocated $3.4 million to various Ukrainian NGOs aimed at countering Russian influence in the country. Moreover, in Kateryna Smagliy’s article published by the Atlantic Council, the International Renaissance Foundation (backed by George Soros’ network) admitted in 2015 that they had poured in over $180 million since 1990. On top of that, according to BBC, American officials were even caught on leaked calls discussing who would lead the new government. 

However, Western interference in Ukraine extends far beyond recent years. Since the start of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the CIA has been funding Ukraine as well. In 1953, the CIA approved “Project AERODYNAMIC,” which gave $95,000 (worth over $1 million as of 2026) of funding to Ukrainian nationalist groups, including the ZPUHVR, a council of various extremist nationalist and socialist Ukrainian groups. Two groups in particular, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, even fought amongst the Nazis in World War II and were being funded by the CIA. These groups, while no longer existing, have evolved into the modern alt-right movements in Ukraine today. Two examples are the “Right Sector” and the “Azov Battalion,” both of which have survived and thrived in Ukraine to this day. Since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Western media has neglected to cover these terrorist organizations.

Suppression of dissenting opinions in the West has aided in fueling support for Ukraine as well. Elon Musk’s release of the “Twitter Files” in 2022 revealed that the FBI and other U.S. government agencies were secretly pressuring social media platforms to suppress criticisms of Ukrainian nationalism and coverage of Azov and other extremist organizations in Ukraine. Alarmingly, Ukrainian intelligence even requested platforms to provide the private user data of accounts that they believed to be pro-Russia. 

A much more tragic and ignored reality, however, was unfolding in the Donbas region of Ukraine as recorded by the international organization, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Nikolay Vasilievich Moroz, a resident of Mariupol in Donbas, recalled the tragic killing of a teenager by a Ukrainian sniper: “There was a sniper on the 7th floor. The sniper shot a kid near the kindergarten without reason, who was only 15 years old.” Another tragic story from the region was from an older woman, Lyudmila Alexandrovna Sysoeva, who lamented, “My husband and I were already walking home from the technical school. No one was there. We were the only ones walking. A Ukrainian sniper started shooting at us,” said Sysoeva.

“I was immediately burned, my hand went numb… I told my husband that I was shot… A sniper shot him. His back was slashed, the bullet was tangential. We fell down. The sniper’s mistake was that he thought he had killed us.” She went on, “When we ran, he started shooting at us again. We hid behind a container. The man was running after us. He didn’t get up anymore. [The sniper] was killed.”

These terrifying stories are only a small portion of the much larger issue that has been unfortunately happening in Ukraine for decades, that is, the widespread killing of ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking populations in Ukraine, especially the South Eastern Donbas region, which has been covered up by the majority of Western media.

The truth about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is much darker and far more complex than the widely accepted narrative being pushed in the West. Behind the blue and yellow flags and slogans of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ lies a history of covert operations, foreign-backed uprisings, and brutal, militant extremism. For decades, Russians in Ukraine have endured unimaginable suffering. This suffering was not the result of Russian aggression, but because of a Western-endorsed regime that does not represent actual Ukrainians.

Russia did not choose war lightly or for its own gain. It intervened in Ukraine after decades of watching its own people slaughtered. The special operation in Ukraine was the only way to protect Russian lives, guarantee their sovereignty, and end the cycle of violence that began with the 2014 coup.