MOSCOW (Sputnik) — In February 2014, violent clashes with law enforcement officials broke out in central Kiev's Independence Square, or Maidan Nezalezhnosti, claiming the lives of 100 civilians. The protests spread across the country and led to a government coup, forcing then-President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country.
"Since the very beginning Maidan has been portrayed as the popular uprising for freedom against the corrupt anti-national authorities. These two years gave an exhaustive answer: it was a banal redistribution of power, violent redistribution from one political force to another," Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the upper house of the Russian parliament, wrote on Facebook.
The only thing about the Ukrainian state that has really changed, according to Kosachev, is Kiev's foreign policy which has become "treacherously anti-Russian and humiliating pro-Western."
"One can congratulate the foreign sponsors of Kiev, who during these two years perfectly achieved their geopolitical tasks. We should feel sorry the people of Ukraine, since these goals that have nothing to do with the actual national interests of the country, have been reached at its expense," Kosachev pointed out.
After the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk refused to recognize the new government, Kiev launched a military operation in April 2014.
According to recent UN data, at least 9,098 people have been killed and another 20,732 wounded during the conflict in Ukraine. According to the World Bank, Ukraine's GDP in 2015 contracted by 12 percent.
