From Izvestia, June 18, 2026, p. 3. Complete text:
At their core, “color revolutions” – which in the first quarter of the 21st century significantly altered and continue to alter the balance of power on the world stage – are a set of externally coordinated actions aimed at overthrowing undesirable political regimes and stripping entire states of their sovereignty without the direct use of armed forces. Such tactics and tools are constantly being developed and adapted by the West to modern realities.
It is important to understand that a color revolution can only be carried out in countries that are democratic by Western standards, where the opposition enjoys all the benefits of a so-called open society. Such a coup is the final stage, the logical conclusion of a destructive scenario launched from abroad, which involves the prearranged creation of the conditions and prerequisites necessary for a change in power.
As practice shows, color revolution scenarios follow a standard pattern consisting of three main stages.
During the first (preparatory) stage, infrastructure is established and the future protest movement is organized. This stage lasts from several months to three to five years.
In the second stage (the active phase), coordinated antigovernment demonstrations are organized, escalating the situation into a state of irreversible conflict. It consists of mass acts of civil disobedience, including the seizure of administrative buildings, aimed to force the incumbent government to resign. This stage lasts from several weeks to two to three years.
In the third (final) stage, the victorious opposition establishes a new hierarchy for governing the state and the economy and secures international recognition of its authority.
The primary objective of the initiators of a color revolution in the first stage is to provoke widespread public discontent with the authorities’ actions. Modern public relations techniques are employed to fuel antigovernment sentiment and, more broadly, a crisis of institutional trust. An example of this is the rise in antigovernment protests in Serbia in 2025-2026 [see Vol. 77, No. 27, pp. 9-10] – the birthplace of one of the first modern color revolutions. Although these protests have yet to result in a change of power in Belgrade, they exhibit all the signs of preparations for a color revolution, including elements closely resembling the scenario of Ukraine’s 2014 European Union rallies.
Equally important conditions for preparing regime change in a target country include cultivating and uniting an opposition-minded elite that possesses financial, organizational and informational resources. This elite becomes closely tied to external sponsors by placing its financial assets abroad under their control. It should be noted, however, that the success of such actions is not guaranteed. Despite serious efforts by the US, UK and Poland to cultivate a pro-Western elite to carry out a color revolution in Belarus in 2020 [see Vol. 72, No. 33, pp. 3-7], the attempted coup was thwarted by decisive measures taken by President Aleksandr Lukashenko.
Western-oriented forces particularly focus on cultivating activists and opinion leaders capable of mobilizing the masses to protest under the pretext of oppression or the violation of rights based on ethnic, religious, or other grounds. Preference is given to charismatic opposition figures who are not directly linked to the West. Among them are Joshua Wong and Benny Tai, activists from the 2014 Hong Kong protests; Nahid Islam, coordinator of Students Against Discrimination in Bangladesh in 2024; and in 2025, the leader of the All-Indonesian Student Executive Board Muzammil Ihsan and Tegar Afriansyah, a leader of the Indonesian Student League for Democracy.
At the same time, effective mechanisms for communication and the manipulation of public opinion are being created. The dissemination of fake news is widely used to discredit the authorities (primarily through accusations of corruption), and to instill a false sense of injustice and anxiety among the population.
This practice became widespread during the organization of protests in Armenia in 2018 aimed at overthrowing president Serzh Sargsyan [see Vol. 70, No. 17, pp. 3-7], in attempts to discredit the leadership of Serbia and the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as following the 2024 parliamentary elections in Georgia [see Vol. 76, No. 44-45, pp. 9-13] and during the election campaign in Hungary in February-April 2026 [see Vol. 78, No. 16, pp. 3-5].
The problems and mistakes of the leadership in the target countries contribute to the success of the plans of the organizers of color revolutions.
At the same time, it is important to bear in mind that, despite the significance of internal challenges, external forces are the key organizers of color revolutions. Among the tools they use, Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play a special role. These “soft power” structures are organizationally and financially linked to the foreign ministries and intelligence agencies of the US and its allies. In Serbia alone, their numbers have doubled over the past 10 years, reaching 38,000.
Foreign handlers assign NGOs the tasks of monitoring and destabilizing the domestic political situation, developing strategies to pressure the government, creating so-called “informational noise,” recruiting and training participants in the protest movement, interacting with the opposition and pro-Western civil society organizations, accumulating and distributing financial resources and coordinating protest actions.
With NGOs playing an active role, each color revolution develops its own visual propaganda and symbolic systems that appeal to the population, incorporating universal signs, gestures and colors (the “Velvet Revolution” in Armenia, the chant “Pumpaj!” [“Keep going!”] during the protests in Serbia and the bloody hand symbol).
The hallmarks of the onset of a color revolution are coordinated mass protests in major cities, increased external pressure on state leaders demanding concessions to the opposition and the relinquishment of power. Media pressure on the authorities intensifies, aiming to dehumanize and demonize them in order to morally justify violence against representatives of the ruling regime. This is followed by widespread direct calls for regime change
Those orchestrating the escalation of antigovernment demonstrations [often] select as triggers high-profile events, often of a tragic nature. Most often, these are linked to election results (events in Bangladesh in August 2024), a sharp worsening of socioeconomic crises (protests in Peru in September-October 2025), corruption scandals (the unrest in Nepal in September 2025).
An act of self-immolation in Tunisia in December 2010, carried out in protest against the arbitrariness of law enforcement, corruption and official inaction, served as the trigger for the “Jasmine Revolution” in that country and sparked the events of the Arab Spring in countries across Africa and the Middle East (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania, Jordan, Sudan and Oman).
To keep the “streets” mobilized, the organizers of color revolutions make extensive use of psychological manipulation techniques on protest participants. They do not shy away from fabricating events, including staging scripted scenes, which are then presented by Western media as a manifestation of the people’s desire to rid themselves of the current regime. A striking example of such theatrics was the Ukrainian EU rallies of 2014.
The beginning of the active phase – which distinguishes this event from social protests (classic revolutions) – is the intensification of coordinated pressure on the target country, both political-diplomatic (blackmail, threats) and financial-economic (sanctions, embargoes, blockades). The intensity of information, propaganda and disinformation campaigns rises sharply – in which leading foreign politicians and top officials of beneficiary states are directly involved.
It is important to note that in cases where the government demonstrates the ability to contain mass protests or engage in dialogue with the population, the instigators of color revolutions resort to the direct and unrestricted use of violence, going so far as to enlist Western-sponsored terrorist and separatist groups to destabilize the domestic political situation and overthrow the unwanted leadership of the target countries.
It should be particularly emphasized that the aforementioned schemes and tools for regime change are constantly being supplemented with increasingly sophisticated methods of influence. Recently, there has been an increasing trend toward combining forceful methods of influence with modern information technologies. To a large extent, this is a consequence of the US administration’s implementation of the “peace through strength” principle, including through the use of “hybrid warfare.”
In particular, to increase the effectiveness of managing protest movements, their external organizers are making greater use of social media, messaging apps (specifically YouTube, Instagram, Telegram and Signal) and other digital platforms as means of communication. Protest activists use secure communication methods (disposable mobile phones without registration and the “Starlink” satellite system). The testing of modern IT technologies was observed during antigovernment protests in Slovakia (January 2025), Turkey (March 2025), Nepal (September 2025) and Serbia (from May 2025 to the present).
Digital tools for manipulating public opinion and organizing antigovernment protests are widely used against the authorities of Russia-friendly African states, including Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and the Republic of the Congo.
It is important to note that those seeking regime change see significant potential in the use of artificial intelligence technologies. These technologies are intended to process large volumes of data on the situation in target countries, identify vulnerabilities among members of the ruling elites and develop detailed scenarios for external intervention. Of particular interest is the ability to use AI to uncover users’ personal and professional connections, political preferences and psychological characteristics in order to conduct targeted information campaigns aimed at specific population groups.
Also noteworthy is the tendency of external organizers of color revolutions to conceal their involvement in the planning process more thoroughly. To this end, funding for opposition activists is increasingly channeled through offshore accounts, cryptocurrency, or organizations registered as humanitarian or religious groups. The use of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Monero, Ethereum, USDT and others is becoming increasingly widespread.
In addition, the color regimes brought to power by the West are being enlisted to provide material and other assistance to “like-minded individuals,” as in the case of Ukrainian intelligence services’ support for the Hungarian Tisza [Respect and Freedom] party through Oshchadbank [see Vol. 78, No. 11, p. 17] and the blackmailing of Budapest over the issue of respecting the rights of ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia.
To summarize, it is important to emphasize that, regardless of any policy adjustments, the West views the use of “soft power” as a means of reaping enormous geopolitical benefits at a relatively low cost. The time frame for achieving these goals has been reduced to a few years and formulaic tactics for destabilizing the social environment simplify the process, making color revolutions the preferred choice for Western political strategists.
Thus, the timely identification of threats to the national interests of Russia, its allies and partners resulting from attempts to carry out color revolutions remains as relevant as ever. Since the mechanisms behind these “revolutions” become more sophisticated with each new instance – whether successful or not – no state, regardless of its political regime or cultural and religious characteristics, is immune to the color threat.
In this regard, ensuring the sovereignty and internal stability of Russia and its friendly states requires systematic monitoring of the dynamics of such challenges and the timely development of response strategies. Establishing a continuous exchange of experience among interested countries in countering such threats is likely to yield positive results.