Was Euromaidan a Coup?
Calling Euromaidan a coup compresses three months of protest, state violence, negotiation, political collapse, and elections into one loaded word. The transition was constitutionally irregular in important respects, but it was not a secret Western seizure of the Ukrainian state.
Understanding the distinction requires separating how the protests began from how President Viktor Yanukovych finally lost power.
From One Protest to a National Crisis
Demonstrations began in November 2013 after Yanukovych suspended preparations for an association agreement with the European Union. The first crowds called for a change in policy, not the overthrow of the government.
A violent police clearance on November 30 brought far larger numbers into central Kyiv. Over the following months, demands widened to include accountability for police abuse, limits on presidential power, release of detainees, and ultimately Yanukovych's departure.
Most participants protested peacefully, although radical groups fought police and occupied buildings. The government used riot police, restrictive laws, abductions, and force, and the confrontation culminated in the killing of protesters and police during February 18–20.
The Agreement and Yanukovych's Departure
On February 21, Yanukovych and opposition leaders signed an agreement witnessed by the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Poland. It called for a return to the 2004 constitution, an interim unity government, and an early presidential election by December.
Parts of the protest movement rejected a schedule that left Yanukovych in office for months. That evening he left Kyiv, and during the night he travelled east before eventually entering Russia.
Yanukovych did not deliver a resignation to parliament. He later said threats forced him out and insisted that he remained Ukraine's lawful president.
What Parliament Did
On February 22, the Verkhovna Rada declared that Yanukovych had withdrawn from performing his constitutional duties and scheduled an election for May 25. The resolution received 328 votes in the 450-seat parliament, including votes from many members of Yanukovych's former governing coalition.
This was not the impeachment procedure written in Ukraine's constitution. That procedure required an investigation and court findings, while the constitution also listed resignation, incapacity, impeachment, or death as routes to early termination.
The resolution instead addressed a situation the text did not clearly anticipate: a president who had left the capital, stopped carrying out his duties, and could not be restored through the political agreement. Legal scholars can reasonably debate whether parliament acted from constitutional necessity or exceeded the constitution.
Oleksandr Turchynov became acting president, and parliament approved an interim government. The transition involved the existing legislature rather than a military council dissolving elected institutions.
Elections and the Coup Claim
Ukraine held the May presidential election under severe conditions, including Russia's occupation of Crimea and armed disruption in Donbas. Petro Poroshenko won a majority in the first round, and international observers judged that it was a genuine election broadly respecting fundamental freedoms.
A Council of Europe report traced the sequence from the February agreement through Yanukovych's flight, parliament's decision, and the new government. That record supports criticism of the legal shortcut without supporting a claim that Western governments simply installed Ukraine's leaders.
Russia uses “coup” to portray every decision after February 2014 as illegitimate, including Kyiv's resistance to intervention in Crimea and Donbas. The label also shifts attention away from the scale of the Euromaidan movement and the fact that voters soon chose a president.
The most accurate conclusion allows complexity. Yanukovych's removal came through an extraordinary and disputed constitutional response after he abandoned the seat of government, but calling the entire Revolution of Dignity a Western-organized coup replaces that history with a slogan.
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