The US and European outcry over the deaths of these Ukrainian opposition figures has been, shall we say, muted, and not only in comparison to the outcry which followed the death of Boris Nemtsov. Today we see nothing close to the outrage which ensued after the murders of Russian opposition journalists and activists Paul Klebnikov (2004), Anna Politkovskaya (2006) and Alexander Litvinenko (2006). The reason for this is not difficult to discern.

Our wondrously pliant Beltway media has, for months now, ignored the spate of murders and suspicious suicides in Kiev because it prefers not to report on the illiberal tide that is now sweeping over Kiev.

The lesson policymakers (as well as the many 2016 presidential aspirants) might take away from the example of post-Yanukovych Ukraine is that overthrowing democratically-elected governments, however corrupt, is not a promising recipe for building the kinds of ‘civil societies’ that we are told are in America’s interest.

American journalists and US policymakers might do well to focus more closely on the full dimensions of what is unfolding in Kiev rather than to continue to simply parrot the post-Maidan party line.