CIA-Related Agency for Color Revolutions and Regime Changes
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) may sound like the leading edge of a generous and enlightened US foreign Policy. It may have been just that when founded by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. It’s original goal was to counter the influence of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and advance US foreign policy interests through socioeconomic development. It has in the past been funded by Congress as an independent Agency under the supervision of the President, Secretary of State, and National Security Council. Over the years it has become a largely secret and independent Deepstate agency tied to aggressive State Department foreign policy closely tied to the CIA. In this regard, it has evolved into an aggressive funder of Color Revolutions and regime changes designed to maintain US control of international affairs. Color Revolutions are US or allied attempts to overthrow, intimidate, or control nations out-of-step with US foreign and economic policy and assure US military dominance and hegemony. In recent years, USAID has also funded propaganda and training programs for pushing liberal gender ideology and Marxist DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusiveness) ideology. The fiscal year 2025 Congressional budget for USAID is about $40 billion but has been subject only to limited Congressional control.
Color Revolutions and ideology propaganda and orientation are usually funded through NGOs (Non-government organizations), which have very limited requirements for reporting financial details.
Color Revolutions are usually implemented by organizing opposition to incumbent national leaders through US-funded NGO’s using internet, funded-media, political organizers, demonstrations, and if necessary violence and rioting. These are not always successful. Some of the more famous are the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003; the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, 2004-2005; the Arab Spring, 2011-2012; and the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, 2014. The Kosovo-Serbia NATO intervention in 1998-1999 should also be counted. Even now, US and European Union NGOs are heavily involved in trying to overthrow the anti-foreign NGO Dream Party majority in Georgia and causing unrest in Slovakia because of its opposition to the Ukraine War. In 1996, the CIA helped Russian President Boris Yeltsin to be re-elected using “aggressive” methods. From about 2011 through 2018, the US and UK were also involved in funding presidential election opposition by Alexei Navalny to President Vladimir Putin. Russian Federation elections rules, however, disqualify candidates receiving foreign election funding. The CIA has been involved in at least 50 attempts at foreign regime changes. The US has a lot of work to do to prevent foreign money influencing its own elections.
In addition to USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is an independent 501c NGO funded by the US Congress. Although its objective is to promote liberal democracy throughout the world, it and its subsidiary NGOs are almost always present where the CIA and USAID are involved in disruptive demonstrations threatening regime change. It funds over 1600 NGOs. In 2009 it received $136 million income from Federal agencies. Initiated by President Reagan in 1983, it seems to have drifted from Reagan political and social philosophy. Trump intends to cut NED funding.
Moreover, George Soros, who President Biden recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, through his Open Society Foundations, is usually involved where USAID, NED, and the CIA are pushing for regime changes or the advancement of secular humanist ideology in the name of democracy. Soros is estimated to have spent $180 million fomenting the Ukrainian Maidan Revolution in 2013 and 2014.
Viktor Yanukovych had been elected President of Ukraine in 2004, beating his opponent Viktor Yushchenko 49.4% to 46.7%, but Yushchenko called for his supporters to take to streets in protest of alleged election fraud. With much foreign pressure, the Ukrainian Supreme Court called for a new election, which Yushchenko won 52% to 44% after a strong anti-Yanukovych campaign assisted by foreign media. This was the beginning of protests and secession movements in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. All this was called the Orange Revolution, because of the orange campaign banners of Yushchenko. However, Yanukovych was elected president in the 2010 election with 49.6% of the vote against Yulia Tymoshenko with 46.0% of the vote. Yanukovych carried the predominantly Russian-speaking states in eastern and southern Ukraine with 60 to 90 percent of the vote.
In 2008, President George W. Bush, undoubtedly influenced by his Vice President Dick Chaney, started pushing NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, The idea was to surround Russia and dominate the Black Sea.
According to Eric Zuesse, writing in Strategic Culture (September 5, 2016), in 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was tasked by President Obama to overthrow the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad in Syria by means of “color revolutions.” The CIA Director at that time was John Brennan. John Kerry replaced Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in February 2013. The objective of such color revolutions is supposedly to spread the rule of democratic government.
In February 2013, President Obama authorized the CIA and State Department to proceed with the overthrow of the government headed by President Viktor Yanukovych, elected in 2010. Yanukovych was a former Prime Minister and Governor of the heavily Russian-ethnic state of Donetsk. Yanukovych was pro-neutrality and wanted to keep good economic and political relations with Russia.
Also according the Zuesse, the first “technical camp” for training mass-demonstration organizers in Ukraine was held on March 1, 2013, in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. American instructors showed how social networks and internet technologies could be used to manipulate public opinion and provoke violent protests. Examples of successful network formation in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya were used. By the last conference in the Kyiv Embassy in November 2013, 300 organizers had been trained in five training conferences throughout Ukraine. Much of the expenses were paid for by George Soros associated NGOs.
In November 2013, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had been elected in 2010, set aside a parliamentary approved decision to join the European Union to consider a more attractive offer from the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). This included cheap natural gas and a badly needed $15 billion loan to heal the Ukrainian economy. The EU could not compete with the offer. This anticipated reversal caused a series of street protests that lasted for months. More restrictive protest laws and police enforcement led to a large, barricaded protest camp on Independence Square (Maidan) in central Kyiv, giving the “Maidan Revolution” name to the pollical demonstrations.
In December 2013, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in a visit to Ukraine stated:
"Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations," she said. "We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine."
There is documentation for about $5.1 billion spent on “democratizing” Ukraine from 1992 through 2013. This would increase enormously beginning in 2014.
On February 6, 2014, Victoria Nuland, met with the leaders of the Svoboda (Freedom) Party, which is generally considered ultranationalist and strongly anti-Russian. Many of its members have strong historical sympathies with Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. They are strongest in Western Ukraine and had often been associated with thuggish protest mobs. They are a small party, winning just 11 percent of seats in the 2012 Parliamentary Elections but have considerable influence over more centrist Ukrainian parties. Conservapedia estimates from two to five thousand activists in the Maidan demonstrations were members of the Svoboda Party.
During February 18-20, the Maidan Revolution began in which 100 activists, many paid by George Soros, and 17 police officers were killed. According to the Prosecutor General’s office, more than 150 witnesses, including more than half the wounded, testified that snipers from overlooking buildings, including Hotel Ukrainia, began shooting at both police and activists, allegedly to enlarge the disaster and magnify the national and international protest against Yanukovych. All the deadly sniping reports were denied by the post-revolution investigating committee. George Friedman, chairman of Stratfor, called the Ukrainian coup "the most blatant coup in history. In fact, Russian intelligence recorded a phone call, two weeks before, of Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who the new Ukrainian leaders would be. This should still be available on internet.
On February 24, 2014, Yanukovych was forced to flee Ukraine for Russia. Three American officials were prominent in managing this coup and regime change: then Vice President Joe Biden, Vitoria Nuland, and Biden’s then and future presidential defense advisor, Jake Sullivan.
However, Crimea, which is 79% Russian, immediately seceded with 97% approval and joined the Russian Federation. By March 2014, civil war had broken out in eastern and southern Ukraine, in which 14,000 were killed. There was a Minsk 1 cease-fire agreement on September 5, 2014, but it did not last. The Minsk II agreement on February 15, 2015, giving Russian-speaking Ukrainians equal rights and semi autonomy for Donbass states of Donetsk and Lugansk was never implemented as promised by Ukraine. It was later revealed that Ukraine, with the backing of France, Germany, the US, and UK only signed Minsk II to give time to rebuild and further equip the Ukrainian Army to invade the Donbass and Crimea. Ukrainian artillery shelling of civilian areas of Donetsk persisted and increased ten-fold on February 22, 2022, as Ukrainian troops concentrations appeared to threaten Donetsk City.
Two Rand Corporation consulting papers published at the request of the US Defense Department in April 2019, outlined a plan to use Ukraine to provoke Russia to war by first intensifying bombardment and strikes against the Donbass states of Donetsk and Lugansk. Following Russian intervention against Ukraine, the US and NATO would place massive economic sanctions against Russia, causing the Russian economy to collapse. Popular revolt would then overthrow Vladimir Putin. This would result in the breakup of the Russian Federation and exploitation of its natural resources. The Rand Corporation pointed out this plan had a low probability of success and could damage US international reputation. Yet the Biden Administration began to implement it as soon as it took power in 2021.
Thus, Russian intervention into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was NOT unprovoked. US and NATO provocation had begun with building up the Ukrainian Army and insisting Ukraine should be part of NATO. The Ukrainian Army had been treating Russian-speakers like terrorists, and new Ukrainian laws discriminated against Russian speakers, culture, teaching Russian history, Russian publications, and media and outlawed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church because of its traditional connection to the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. Putin’s military intervention into Ukraine was risky, because Russia’s land forces were only 500,000 and had tremendous territory to protect, whereas the Ukrainian Army was over 700,000, the second largest in Europe save Turkey and was well trained and equipped by the US and NATO.
Moreover, Ukraine’s President Zelensky had started negotiating with the Russians on February 28 and had reached a peace agreement in Istanbul on March 29. This would have essentially implemented the Minsk II agreement and left Donetsk and Lugansk as semi-autonomous states of Ukraine. Only Crimea, which is traditionally Russian and has hosted the important Sevastopol Russian Naval Base on the Black Sea since 1783, would have remained Russian. However, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivered the US and UK message to Zelensky on April 9, 2022, that the US and UK wanted to continue the war to weaken and breakup Russia, and that they would support him until complete Ukrainian victory. Ukraine has now been all but destroyed trying to weaken Russia. The sanctions have been a failure and simply pushed Russia into a strong alliance with China.
Moreover, the Istanbul agreement and other attempted negotiations prove that alleged Russian ambition to conquer all of Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States, or any NATO country are absurd nonsense. It is only a poor and outdated understanding of history and deceitful propaganda to justify weakening Russian at the expense of more than a million Ukrainian lives. Ukraine is losing more than a thousand soldiers a day and literally running out of soldiers.
Russia began fighting a war of attrition by late 2022, but Ukraine has been reduced to fighting a war of propaganda. Most Ukrainian propaganda is not credible to rational and informed observers.
Despite outrageous and logically absurd Ukrainian propaganda estimates on Russian soldiers killed, the best honest estimates are running close to 90,000. But I believe even this recent BBC estimate is too high. The Russians are inflicting KIA and DOW deaths as much as ten to one on the Ukrainians.
According to preliminary data, USAID funded projects in Ukraine amounted to $9 billion in 2022, $16 billion in 2023, and dropped significantly to to $5.4 billion in 2024.
So now you know that USAID played a significant role in starting the Ukraine War.
Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are doing a great service to the American people. It needs to continue.
Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East. 
