===Euromaidan coup===
{{See also|Maidan coup}}
[[Washington D.C.]]’s regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), spent $16.8 million from 2007 through 2012, to stimulate civic activity and fund election watchdogs and non-state run reporting outlets in Ukraine. These funds have gone to organizations that played a role in the 2004 Orange Revolution and have since continued to monitor elections, investigate government corruption and educate youth about Western "democratic " government.<ref>https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-foreign-aid-ukraine_n_4914682</ref> Since the Maidan coup of 2014 NED spent $22.4 million on operations inside Ukraine, when democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown and replaced by a successor regime handpicked by the U.S. Those operations included propping up and training pro-Western political parties, funding pliant media organizations, and subsidizing massive privatization drives that benefit foreign multinational corporations, all in an effort to secure U.S. control over the country that NED President Carl Gershman called “the biggest prize” in Europe.<ref>https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/26/robert-parry-the-mess-that-nuland-made/</ref>
[[File:Nuland-in-ukraine.jpg|left|3O0px|thumb|Maidan coup conspirators [[Oleh Tyahnybok]] (left), U.S. Asst. Sec. of State Victoria Nuland (center), Yarsenyi Yatsenyuk, and (right) Vitali Klitschko (rear).<ref>https://youtu.be/vtKgW2DSIb0</ref>]]
The National Endowment for Democracy was set up in 1983 after a series of scandals undermined both the credibility and the public image of the [[CIA]]. The organization was established as a cutout doing much of the agency’s dirtiest work. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” Gershman himself said, explaining its creation. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED cofounder Allen Weinstein told ''[[The Washington Post]]'' in 1991.