WI: Maidan revolution in a nuclear armed Ukraine.

I personally think that had Ukraine kept its nuclear weapons there would have never been any color revolutions in that country since the western powers would not dream of destabilizing a nuclear state. However lets say that Ukraine keeps the nuclear arsenal they inherited from the USSR and the Maidan revolution happens on schedule in 2014. How will things go down? Will Yaunukovic threaten foreign states with retaliation, will he nuke The Hague after the opposition starts demanding that he be tried there?
 
The role of the west in the Maidan revolution is vastly overated. Sure, they probably gave a hand behind the scene after it started but it was very much a homegrown movement. I also don't see anybody obey crazy orders from Yanukovich as in OTL it seem pretty clear he has lost control of most of the army fairly early on (it pretty much was non-beligereant but benovolent to the protesters) and that, well, those orders would be batshit crazy!

It might make the russians hesitate a bit in Crimea and thw Donbass later on so there is that.

That asssuming the Maidan revolution won't be butterflied by the POD.
 

James G

Gone Fishin'
I personally think that had Ukraine kept its nuclear weapons there would have never been any color revolutions in that country since the western powers would not dream of destabilizing a nuclear state. However lets say that Ukraine keeps the nuclear arsenal they inherited from the USSR and the Maidan revolution happens on schedule in 2014. How will things go down? Will Yaunukovic threaten foreign states with retaliation, will he nuke The Hague after the opposition starts demanding that he be tried there?
That's quite a lot of pro-Putin propaganda / bull in such a short piece of writing.
After The Hague, the capital of the Netherlands, a NATO country, is nuked as it is so eloquently put and millions of Dutch civilians die, will the Ukrainian NSSSR be free of western destabilizing efforts then? I hope so; no more evil nefarious Western plots.
 
I personally think that had Ukraine kept its nuclear weapons there would have never been any color revolutions in that country since the western powers would not dream of destabilizing a nuclear state. However lets say that Ukraine keeps the nuclear arsenal they inherited from the USSR and the Maidan revolution happens on schedule in 2014. How will things go down? Will Yaunukovic threaten foreign states with retaliation, will he nuke The Hague after the opposition starts demanding that he be tried there?
There was more or less open interference during the 1996 election in Russia, so I doubt that that this would prevent the encouragement of the color revolutions. Of course, by this point the Ukrainian economy would be utterly ruined both by the cost of upkeeping their nuclear weapons and the sanctions that would have been imposed on them for refusing to surrender them, so having similar color revolutions seems unlikely.
As for the idea of Ukraine threatening anyone with nuclear weapons (let alone using them) is too ridiculous to be discussed.


The role of the west in the Maidan revolution is vastly overated. Sure, they probably gave a hand behind the scene after it started but it was very much a homegrown movement.
This would sound a lot more convincing if a US government official wasn't actually picking the next Ukrainian Prime minister for them.
 
Ok so the Hague is nuked by Ukraine. Approximately 30 seconds after it goes on CNN, if not minutes after their warning system picks up the launch track outbound, the Russians are falling all over themselves to desperately appease NATO, up to and including delivering their puppet's head over to the Dutch on a goddamn pike. Because I'm pretty sure the last thing Putin needs is nuclear apocalypse over the loose cannon to the south deciding to ripplefire his arsenal off. At any rate, it's a moot point, because the Ukraine had physical control over the weapons but not the means to actually use them without Russian PAL's, and I can't imagine any scenario where they get allowed to keep control of a third of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal. Not without the USSR splintering WAY worse then it did at least.
 
I've always felt that for Ukraine to keep nuclear weapons might actually lead to *more* Russian intervention--Putin sends in troops to save Yanukovych because "we can't allow Ukraine's nukes to fall into the hands of an anti-Russian government."
 
I've always felt that for Ukraine to keep nuclear weapons might actually lead to *more* Russian intervention--Putin sends in troops to save Yanukovych because "we can't allow Ukraine's nukes to fall into the hands of an anti-Russian government."

As I said, it'd be exceptionally unlikely that Ukraine would be allowed to keep her nukes at all, without the Soviet Union just utterly evaporating into warlord states or something of that nature, and even then, the US wouldnt exactly be happy about it...
 
Will Yaunukovic threaten foreign states with retaliation, will he nuke The Hague after the opposition starts demanding that he be tried there?
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Sooo... he is told to go to court in Hague, so he just nukes Hague to not go to court.

Now that's some logic if I've ever seen some.
 

RousseauX

Donor
There was more or less open interference during the 1996 election in Russia, so I doubt that that this would prevent the encouragement of the color revolutions. Of course, by this point the Ukrainian economy would be utterly ruined both by the cost of upkeeping their nuclear weapons and the sanctions that would have been imposed on them for refusing to surrender them, so having similar color revolutions seems unlikely.
As for the idea of Ukraine threatening anyone with nuclear weapons (let alone using them) is too ridiculous to be discussed.
there wasn't open interference in the 1996 elections in Russia

it was a soft rigged election, but the people who rigged it were rich russians who feared communist return, on the US
This would sound a lot more convincing if a US government official wasn't actually picking the next Ukrainian Prime minister for them.
A US government official didn't pick the next Ukrainian prime minister
 
there wasn't open interference in the 1996 elections in Russia

it was a soft rigged election, but the people who rigged it were rich russians who feared communist return, on the US
Well, Clinton did not outright say that he wanted Yeltsin to win. But nearly everything else possible was done. See here for some introductory analysis.

A US government official didn't pick the next Ukrainian prime minister
How short are memories here...
 

RousseauX

Donor
Well, Clinton did not outright say that he wanted Yeltsin to win. But nearly everything else possible was done. See here for some introductory analysis.
read "The Oligarchs" by David E. Hoffman which goes into a lot of details about how the 1996 election was won for yeltsin, the article you linked is extremely vague the only concrete action taken by the US was loans to Russia and some assertions that that's what funded the Yeltsin campaign (in reality the funding mechanism for the yelsin campaign was mainly by laundering russian state bonds), the rest is basically "Clinton kept saying nice things about Yelsin on TV" (lol if you think the average russian voter gave a shit about what clinton thought).



I'm not sure what this is suppose to be the evidence of

It shows Ukrainians consulted the US about the post-maidan political arrangement (cuz they wanted US loans lol), which is obvious but really different from the US picking the next Ukrainian prime minister
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
First of all, Yanukovych won't nuke anything. Yanukovych would probably request Russian assistance, then the Russian Army comes in and stomps the protesters, Hungary '56 style.

If Yanukovych was already overthrown though, Putin wouldn't risk intervening. But if he did, it would be all out. RuAF knocking out Ukrainian air defenses before the Ukrainians knew what hit them, VDV capturing airports, Spetznaz securing all the nukes, and several dozen armored divisions streaming over the border.
 

You really are married to your pro-Putin narrative, aren't you?

What the Nuland-Pyatt phone call is is a selective piece of personal communication cherry-picked for us by Russian intelligence, very likely with the help of their Ukrainian pro-Yanukovych affiliates. Phone calls between top diplomats and state officials do not "leak", they are intercepted by intelligence operatives.

What the call tells us is that in a situation where the pro-Russian president of Ukraine (and his party, the Party of the Regions) was apparently losing their grasp of the state apparatus in the face of heavy opposition and protests, the US officials in question are trying to fathom who in the (predominately pro-Western) opposition will have the best chance to rise to national leadership if Yanukovych and his party will fall due to the ongoing protests. By leaning on then-available information, and through meetings with opposition leaders, Pyatt and Nuland then come to the conclusion that Yatsenyuk, the leader of the biggest opposition party, and a man the president himself had offered the post of prime minister in January 2014, would be the best horse to bet on in the race (so to speak). And then they direct their concrete efforts towards him.

This is the realistic reading of the discussion - the Western governments trying to position themselves to support the most potential pro-Western political faction leader should the highly unpopular pro-Russian government fall (which at that moment, we should remember, looked likelier every day).

To understand the discussion as "the Americans choosing the next Ukrainian PM" is just conspiracist pro-Putin thinking with no real evidence behind it. Remember, this intercepted call is the very best the Russian intelligence and its helpers got to convince us that the ousting of the Yanukovych government was a US/Western plot - a cherry-picked, possibly edited piece of a larger discussion. As such, it is not very convincing at all.

As it is, even without any Western influence, in the case of a crisis that potentially led to the Yanukovych government (where the Party of the Regions was the biggest party) breaking apart, the biggest opposition party, Fatherland, would have been the likeliest candidate to form the next government. And, again, Yatsenuyk was the leader of that second-biggest party in parliament.
 
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