MOSCOW, November 20. /TASS/. After the Maidan [coup] Ukraine has lost its state independence and turned into an "impoverished, destitute land," Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a commentary marking the tenth anniversary of the start of the Ukrainian Euromaidan protests.

"Today it is appropriate to ask the question, what exactly did Euromaidan do for Ukraine, whether its ultimate dream of being integrated into the ‘European family’ has come true. The answer is obvious," the diplomat stated. "Ukraine has turned from a self-sufficient, industrially developed and populous republic of the former USSR into an impoverished, destitute territory," Zakharova noted.

"The country has lost its state independence and is being maintained by Western colonizers who determine its domestic and foreign policy," the diplomat pointed out.

She suggested that "the Ukrainians who came out for the Maidan protests 10 years ago could hardly have imagined what tragic consequences it would have for them." "It is sad that our brotherly Ukrainian people, having been held hostage by the Anglo-Saxons and the Kiev regime serving their interests, are forced to live under tyranny, in fact, in a colony, entirely dependent on external handouts," the diplomat said.

"But this is the price of the so-called ‘European choice,’ which masked the cold-blooded schemes of the West to turn Ukraine into a Russophobic aggressive nationalist state, to use it as a tool in the existential struggle with Russia at the expense the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens and shattered destinies of millions of people," Zakharova stressed.

"Reprisals from the central authorities and the eight-year civil war against Donbass prompted the residents of six out of 27 regions of Ukraine to opt to join Russia," the diplomat went on to say.

Ten years ago "skillful instigators, trained by American and European instructors, brought crowds to street protests with promises of a 'better European' life, visa-free travel to EU countries, democracy, freedom of speech, human rights and the fight against corruption," she pointed out. "In reality, those were well-orchestrated and staged mass riots aimed at overthrowing the legitimate government," Zakharova said.

From the very first days of Euromaidan, "it was clear that we were talking about another 'color revolution' - ‘the brainchild’ of the United States and its allies," she added.

The events were triggered by the government's decision to postpone the planned signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union in order to analyze how it might affect the Ukrainian economy, Zakharova reiterated. "This important aspect is deliberately hushed by Western and Ukrainian propagandists," she pointed out. "Meanwhile, it is the key to understanding the tragic situation we are currently witnessing. Ten years ago, the postponement of the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU wrecked the West's plans to detach Ukraine from Russia and destroy the historically established economic, humanitarian, cultural, spiritual, family and kinship ties that have united our countries and peoples for centuries," the diplomat explained.

"In November 2013, the West and the radical neo-Nazi Ukrainian opposition risked it all to eventually change Ukraine's diversified policy course, to integrate its economy, along with its politics, into the Western neo-colonial system of coordinates," Zakharova stressed.