Robert Parry is a liar when it comes to Ukraine.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

96. I do think the US has/had favored and disfavored players in Ukraine.

I.e. people they would prefer to deal with and people they would prefer not to deal with. And that came out in some of the State Department communications.

However, that said, I do not think they played any active role in changing the regime. I think the US was very encouraged by Maidan because Yanukovych was not a favored player and the hope was that a break from him would be for the better. (Undoubtedly a risky proposition that has not always played out well for us.) But Maidan ultimately succeeded not because the US intervened in it, but rather because of Yanukovych's own efforts to suppress it. And the more Yanukovych pushed, the protesters on Maidan pushed back, to the point where Yanukovych determined he didn't want to be Ceausescu'ed, that he was still a very wealthy man and could live very nicely as a private citizen somewhere else (somewhere else being Russia.) So he literally packed up his bags and left.

But yes, I will admit as far as I think the US had people it would prefer to be running the show, specifically folks who would represent a break from the old oligarch line that you seen in Russia and towards a much more western oriented governing approach. And that's why I think Yatsenyuk struck such a chord with the US. Because while he's by no means your common everyday man off the street, he's likewise not the old oligarch guard, either. He's fairly young, flies regular commercial airlines (as opposed to private jets), stands in line with the commoners to vote, has advocated for financial and governmental oversight, and clearly struck a chord with the people on Maidan still without making himself out to be an ultra-nationalistic firebrand. So it's a no-brainer that he became a favored figure that the US wanted to see rise to the top in Ukraine. Now, what some people mistake as the US State Department "hand picking" Yatsenyuk based on the infamous Nuland-Pratt phone call really didn't amount to anything closely as nefarious. It's best analogy would be that of fantasy football fans picking their rosters to lead their fantasy (read: not real) teams. They simply had no ability to actually pick the Ukrainian government for them, no matter how much some people think.

Interestingly enough, while Yatsenyuk did end up as prime minister, the man who was elected President--Petro Poroshenko--represents something closer to the old guard in terms of Ukrainian government. He is, after all, an oligarch with a lot of wealthy assets. That being said, he has pledged reforms, but it's too early to tell how far he'll go through on them. But you can also say the fact that Ukrainians chose to replace one oligarch (Yanukovych) with another (Poroshenko) runs contrary to the argument that the US was deeply involved in picking Ukraine's leaders, since such a subtle change would arguably not be worth all the trouble.