Slate: Don’t Accept Putin’s Version of History. The West didn’t provoke Russia...

[Tommy_Carcetti]

78. Three days to pack up frivilous valuables before walking to his helicopter? No, not a coup.

Would Yanukovych had preferred to stay in power if the situation was ideal for him? Sure.

But it wasn't. The protesters were not stopping their protests, despite everything he did to try to shut them down. He was the most hated man in the country. So he made a calculated decision to leave. He knew he was still filthy rich and most likely Putin had already offered him sanctuary in Russia at that point, and that he could live very comfortably as a private citizen there without the hassles of the presidency. So he packed up all his goodies--taking his sweet time in doing so--and left under his own willpower in his own helicopters.

The thing is, even if you want to claim he was forcibly removed by "seeing the writing on the wall", it still wouldn't constitute a coup as the word is defined. Coups have a small, organized group doing the overthrowing. But in Ukraine, there was no cadre of opposition leaders or military generals who conspired to remove him. All there was was hundreds of thousands of people in the center of Kiev, and millions more who supported them. Certainly, no small organized group with a scheme.

A revolution, yes. A coup, no.

There is a difference, you know.