Breaking Point: The w*r for Democracy in Ukraine (2017)

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The endlessly

fertile black earth.

For centuries,

Ukraine's blessing.

But also its curse.

From East to West,

the invaders came.

First, the Mongols,

then the Poles.

Then the Turks.

Then the Russians.

Hungry for grain,

hungry for bread,

the invaders conquered the

land and reaped its harvest.

Empire after empire stained

the earth with blood and ash.

It's not an accident that the

Ukrainian national anthem

the first line is

"Ukraine has not yet d*ed."

Your country is

living on the edge,

if that's how you

celebrate your existence.

We're still here!

We're not dead quite yet!

I remember,

my grandmother was from

central Russian-ruled Ukraine.

My grandfather was from

western Polish-ruled Ukraine.

She was Orthodox,

he was Catholic.

And one of the most

intense debates,

which raged almost daily

around their kitchen table was:

"Who repressed us more?"

In 1932 and 1933,

Stalin starved to death

millions of Ukrainian farmers

to crush the country's

dream of independence.

Millions more were k*lled

during World w*r II

in the n*zi-Soviet

battles over Ukraine.

Just like Stalin,

h*tler thought Ukraine was

a kind of breadbasket

that he needed for an empire.

The Soviet Union starts

when Russia and Ukraine

are brought together,

and the Soviet Union ends

when Russia and

Ukraine come apart.

Newly independent Ukraine

was a country still ruled by

its communist era bosses.

They didn't call themselves

communists anymore,

but they were still in charge.

The Orange Revolution was

very brave and very promising.

What happened next

is incredibly disillusioning

and very sad.

The government they

want comes to power

and it does so badly

at actually running the country

that Yanukovych,

who had failed to become

president fraudulently,

is then elected as

President of Ukraine.

A last minute about

turning Ukraine

has seen the government

suspend a trade pact with

the European Union just a week

before it was set to be signed.

The government has

now issued an order

calling off parliamentary

votes on the deal

saying it will renew active

dialogue with Russia.

Ukrainian President

Victor Yanukovych

refused to sign the deal

despite last-ditch efforts

by European leaders

to persuade him overnight.

That's prompted anger.

I live not far away from here.

So, I was able actually to come

to Maidan three times a day.

Sometimes two times a day.

Sometimes stay some

hours in the night.

I liked especially the

fact that students

wanted to have a

non-political protest.

Then I became very optimistic

thinking it's much easier to

put a small country in order

than a huge country in order.

Those who tried to

save themselves

were caught, thrown to the

ground and beaten with sticks.

Some of the protesters escaped

towards St. Michael's Square.

A monk invited them to take

refuge in the monastery.

They barricaded the

door from within.

The young people taking

refuge in the monastery say

they do not intend to go home.

After this morning, they"re no

longer afraid of anything.

They felt physically dutied

living in Yanukovych's Ukraine.

You couldn't live

an honorable life.

Paying bribes, accepting bribes.

You had to be corrupt.

Especially for this

younger generation.

People who came at the age

after the Soviet

Union had collapsed.

People who knew the West,

they knew you didn't

have to live like that.

And a lot of this was:

"" I will not live this way.

I refuse to live this way. ""

When you have a revolution,

whether peaceful or violent,

you have of course

destruction of so called

peaceful rhythm of life,

because you don't know

what to expect next.

You don't know how the

protest will finish,

and you don't know whether

it is dangerous or not

to be next to the protest.

Tetyana Chornovol told

police her car was stopped

by a g*ng of men near

Kyiv just after midnight.

She was dragged

from the vehicle,

assaulted and left in a ditch.

She suffered a broken nose,

concussion and numerous bruises.

The reporter had just

published an article

on the personal wealth of

Ukraine's interior minister.

Ukrainian members of

parliament on Thursday

voted for a draft law

that threatens

fundamental freedoms

including the right to assembly.

Opposition members tried to

block the vote but failed.

The main two things

which shocked me

that at some point, people

lost sense of humor on Maidan.

And almost next day they

lost fear of death.

This is still something

which puzzles me

because I cannot decipher the

psychological instruments

which force people to forget

about security, safety,

about their personal life,

personal obligations to their

families and to the closed ones,

and how they become ready

to die for their country

which was always corrupt.

The BBC can't independently

verify this footage

but video has emerged

which appears to show

president Yanukovych's entourage

fleeing from his luxurious

mansion outside Kyiv...

This afternoon crowds

of curious Ukrainians

streamed into Yanukovych's

sprawling compound.

It's a huge estate. I mean,

they say it's half the

size of Monaco,

costs millions of

Euros in making.

A lot of protesters

are very unhappy

that Yanukovych had

such a place to live

given that living standards

in this country are so low

that average monthly salary

is around 300 Euros.

What was the level of

Yanukovych's corruption?

It's hard to compare in hard

numbers how Yanukovych

ranks to his predecessors,

but Yanukovych seems to have

been in a class by himself.

I've seen one account

that suggests

in four years he stole

perhaps ten billion dollars.

There was never anything

quite like the Maidan.

There was never a

revolutionary movement

on behalf of unified

Europe before.

People never d*ed in the

name of a united Europe.

Before that never happened.

There's never been a movement

this far East in Europe

which was chiefly

about the rule of law.

America is officially calling a

"Russian invasion of Ukraine."

"This is a Russian invasion."

The US says.

There is no doubt these

are Russian forces

roaming the roads here

in Ukraine's Crimea.

There was an opportunity

that I think Putin saw

given what was

going on in Kyiv,

to basically return Crimea

to Russian control.

A few days after

Yanukovych fled Kyiv,

we saw the appearance of

what the Ukrainians called

"little green men."

Combat soldiers who, when you

watch them on television,

by the way they handled

their weapons,

they were clearly

professional soldiers.

Very well-trained

professional soldiers.

They were in Russian combat

uniform, but no insignia.

The m*llitary invasion of

Russia to Ukrainian Crimea

was absolutely predictable.

Putin started to think about

the annexation of Crimea

immediately after the w*r

with Georgia in 2008.

And Vladimir Putin

knew for sure the West

would not be intervening

in the m*llitary sense

to this situation in

Crimea in Ukraine.

What you've seen in

terms of Russian action

is really egregious.

It's a land grab.

You can't find any

other instance

where a European state

has used m*llitary force

basically to change

borders and take territory

from another country.

For Vladimir Putin

annexation of Crimea

was to give more

energy to this myth

that Ukraine and Russia

are the same nation.

And he thought it would

be only beginning,

because he planned

annex not only Crimea.

He really thinks that

Ukraine doesn't exist.

Having so effortlessly

gobbled up Crimea,

it's very easy to see

that Putin at that point was

encouraged to keep going.

There's a Russian saying: "the

eating increases the appetite."

And I think it applies

very much to Putin.

Reuters has reported

eyewitness accounts

of the appearance of Russian

army troops without insignia

in East Ukraine.

After a firefight near

the Russian border

of the Ukrainian

city of Kramatorsk,

pro-Russian militants seized

the police headquarters.

This is Horlivka. They"re

storming the building.

Throwing rocks through windows.

And the police inside

are throwing out smoke grenades

and stun grenades.

When I was watching the Russian

invasion of Eastern Ukraine,

for me it was deja vu.

Not long before I had

finished writing a book about

the Stalinization, Sovietization

of Eastern Europe in 1945.

The methods were

exactly the same.

It was what Russians

call 'maskirovka'.

Pretend they"re not

really Russians.

Create fake political parties.

Create fake slogans.

Recruit local criminals

to undermine what

existing power there is.

This is what the pro-Russian

revolution in Eastern Ukraine

looks like from the inside.

The idea was to create

the semblance

of a separatist movement.

Persuade a few

people to join it.

Persuade the outside world

that that's what it was.

All under the guise of it being

de facto Russian invasion.

Of course now it's more than

clear that's what it was.

Ukraine's army has launched an

aggressive m*llitary operation

as the government tries to

regain control of several...

Ukrainian army setting up

their positions on the road

into Slovyansk,

checking vehicles...

I think Putin's original goal

was to divide Ukraine.

What he didn't expect was

push-back from the Ukrainians.

After Crimea was so

easily conquered,

he expected to walk into

Odessa and other cities

and have exactly

the same reaction.

And I think what he has never

understood, and this has always

been hard for Russians

to understand, is that

there is such a thing as a

Ukrainian national identity.

There are reports that

the Ukrainian army

moved forward this morning.

But we've heard from reporters

that Russian groups had

reestablished positions.

Ukraine has become a testing

ground for the Russian m*llitary.

But with one very significant

modern circumstance,

additional condition.

And that's the Propaganda w*r.

When I look at what Russian

propaganda is spreading,

I wonder at the

power of Photoshop.

How Photoshop can be very easily

used to distort the picture.

The massive lies spread by

the Russian propaganda,

even before the w*r started,

were a key factor in

destabilizing situation

in Ukraine.

During the three months

of armed clashes

in the Donbas region,

the Kyiv authorities have

not been able to quell

the uprising of the

People's militia.

Inept command, thousands

of dead soldiers

and a critical

shortage of funding

does not give the Kyiv regime

any hope for winning.

Why do Americans need this w*r?

All wars have a propaganda

and disinformation element.

This one is nothing new.

What we've seen, over

the last two years,

is a massive propaganda campaign

and a very-very successful

disinformation campaign.

...Russia does not only protect

its national interests,

but seeks to prevent the

outbreak of World w*r Three.

The Russians understand

western media

far better than the western

media understands itself,

and they play to the western

media's short attention span.

If you keep track, you'll

see actors and actresses

playing different roles

in different places.

They just move from

one place to another.

If you keep track, you

know what's going on.

But in the flood of events, what

happens is the Russians do that,

and then they do something else.

And each is treated

as a separate story

or ignored as

part of the noise.

As long as the Russian

government can always

have its message out there,

it will get it covered.

As outrageous as it may be.

Statements that are

just simply untrue.

A Malaysian airliner with

295 people on board

crashes in Eastern Ukraine.

We"ll be live across the world

assessing the impact

of this disaster...

[ANCHORS SPEAKING IN

DIFFERENT LANGUAGES]

...bound for Kuala Lumpur,

roughly three hours

later Ukrainian

air traffic controllers lost

contact with the plane.

Kremlin-backed forces

boasted online

of sh**ting down a Ukrainian

m*llitary transport plane,

before hastily

removing the posts

after realizing minutes later

they had mistakenly sh*t down

the international

passenger flight.

The passengers on board that

plane were from all over Europe,

Asia, even Australia.

But most of them on board,

154 of the 295 on board,

were Dutch.

Also, disturbing reports that

as many as 80 children

could have been on board.

Another disturbing layer to

this already horrific story.

There were truly horrific

pictures of people

from Donetsk and Luhansk

raiding the wreckage

from this downed plane.

Had this gone on for very long,

it would have become obvious

to everyone I think,

if nothing else had occurred,

that the Russian

government bore

ultimate responsibility

for this.

But it didn't happen that way.

When the Malaysian airplane

went down over Ukraine,

that was something

they didn't plan,

they didn't mean

for that to happen.

And so they just threw

up a lot of messages.

The Americans did it,

the CIA did it,

it was the same Malaysian plane

that went down over the Pacific.

The CIA dredged it up,

filled it with corpses.

They have these ideas,

and the point of those ideas is

not that anybody believes them,

but that a real tragedy

involving real human beings

becomes just a media event.

Returning to the Netherlands

where their tragic

journey began,

the first of the victims

of Flight MH17.

40 bodies, all of them

yet to be identified,

carried out of the cargo planes,

with the dignity and

respect they deserve.

It took the sh**ting down

of a Western airplane,

it took the deaths of

Europeans and Australians

to really wake the West

up to what Putin was.

And to the lawlessness

that he represented.

And to the fact that that

was really dangerous

not just for Ukrainians,

but for everybody else.

We ask our partners

not to lift sanctions

until Ukraine takes over the

control of its entire territory

starting with the East of

Ukraine and ending with Crimea.

Crimea was, is, and will

be a part of Ukraine.

Mister Putin, you will never win

the fight against the nation,

united Ukrainian nation.

Despite the w*r,

despite everything,

the main problem in

Ukraine is rule of law.

And if that problem

could be solved,

then not only would all the

other problems in Ukraine

fall into proportion,

resolve themselves,

but also that would be

the best possible result

for the rest of Eastern Europe

or for that matter, just Europe.

Because getting over the hump

from corruption to rule of law

is a lot harder than having

a revolt or a revolution.

Ukraine faces a very

difficult future.

They have these two

big challenges.

One is that they've got to

restructure their economy,

to put on the decentralization.

There's a lot of things

they need to do

to make Ukraine a state

that functions better

in terms of meeting the

requirements of the population.

And they have to do it

while they are engaged

in this m*llitary conflict

with the separatists and

the Russians in the east.

Ukrainian society is

united more than before.

And it was consolidated

by Maidan events.

They are together. And it

doesn't matter whether they are

Jews, Greeks,

Bulgarians, Hungarians.

The only way forward

for Ukraine,

and the only way to

move towards Europe,

is to build a political nation.

Where everybody feels equal

and everybody feels Ukrainian

as in England, everyone

feels British,

whether they are

Indian, Pakistanis,

ex-Polish, Russian, or

English, or Scottish.

Ukraine's become a piece

of a bigger struggle

which I think is really

going to be about the future

of European democracy.

Can European democracy even

survive, into the 21st Century?

Ukraine is really the

first step in a Russian

attempt and effort to undermine

and destroy the West.

And this is said

openly in Russia.

You don't need to be a

conspiracy theorist

to think that.

Ukraine is an illustration

and a demonstration

of Russia's national goals.

Precisely for the reasons

that Putin fears and opposes

the rise of a democratic,

prosperous rule of law Ukraine,

we should be doing everything

we can to encourage it.

I am convinced that the path

to democracy in Russia

goes through Ukraine.