MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. The 2014 coup d’etat in Ukraine was orchestrated with the support of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and became the US agency’s political mistake, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Tucker Carlson published on the US journalist’s website.
Putin said that during the unrest, which broke out in Kiev in the winter of 2014, the United States asked him: "calm Yanukovich down and we will calm the opposition. Let the situation unfold in the scenario of a political settlement."
"We said, all right, agreed, let's do it this way. As the Americans requested, Yanukovich did use neither the armed forces nor the police. Yet the armed opposition committed a coup in Kiev," the Russian leader continued.
The coup was orchestrated "with the backing of CIA, of course," he added.
"Technically, they did everything right. They achieved their goal of changing the government," Putin said. "However, from political standpoint, it was a colossal mistake. Surely it was political leadership's miscalculation. They should have seen what it would evolve into."
"I think one of the deputy secretaries of state said that they cost a large sum of money. Almost 5 billion," he added. "All this could have been done legally, without victims, without military action <…> We would have never considered to even lift the finger if it hadn't been for the bloody developments on Maidan.
The political crisis that broke out in Ukraine in November 2013 later became known as Euromaidan. Large-scale opposition protests quickly turned into violent riots. The political crisis led to a state coup in Ukraine and the country’s partial disintegration in the winter of 2014. Residents of Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine and reunify with Russia in a referendum. Also, an armed conflict with Ukrainian nationalists broke out in the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, prompting their inhabitants to eventually proclaim independence and join Russia after referendums in 2022.