Not the only problem. There was always a problem with the restive Banderite Nazi population in Galicia that you write about. But, as you have mentioned, they were always in a minority. Nonetheless, the CIA started plans in the 1940's and 50's to support and encourage these Nazis because, like all good fascists, they were first and foremost rabid anti-communists. Stepan Bandera himself was recruited as a CIA asset to get his followers to stir up trouble in the UkSSR. For this he was rewarded with a nice life and lived quietly in West Germany until he died of natural causes - much to the chagrin of the Poles.
It was always a strategic goal of the USA to "pry" Ukraine away from Russia. The idea of leveraging Ukraine to reduce Russia to a third-rate power was posited in 1997 by US veteran diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski. He had formerly served as National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, and he wrote a book called The Grand Chessboard.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-pawn-grand-chessboard/5778417
In this book, Brzezinski wrote:
“America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe’s central arena.” He adds “It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of challenging America.”
The best and perhaps only way to achieve this goal, Brzezinski said, was to pry Ukraine away from Russia.
“Ukraine is the critical state, insofar as Russia’s future evolution is concerned.” He says, “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
From 1991 to 2013, the US "invested" over $5 billion in Ukraine, according to Victoria Nuland's remarks at the US-Ukraine Foundation. This was to "promote civic participation and good governance", according to Nuland. Now, I don't know how much of that $5 billion ended up in oligarch pockets, but it was certainly enough to have an impact on Ukrainian politics. What the US did was to elevate, empower and embolden the Western Ukrainians, including groups like Svoboda, Right Sektor and C14.
When Maidan happened, the people's concerns were addressed in an agreement brokered by Germany, France and Poland. It was signed by Yanukovych and three people who all went on to head the interim government after Yanukovych fled. These are the people that Victoria Nuland designated in her leaked phone call with Pyatt. Just a happy coincidence? No. The agreement took away power from Yanukovych and promised early elections ASAP. That should have been enough for any opposition group. But the US could not take a chance on democracy. The Neo-Nazi militias that had been gathered in Kiev to provide muscle for the opposition refused to accept the Agreement. Volodymyr Parasiuk, the leader of the Dnipro-1 Regiment, one of the Nazi militias, threatened to storm the parliament if Yanukovych did not resign immediately.
Yevhen Karas, the leader of another Neo-Nazi ultranationalist group called C14, also took credit for the success of the Maidan protests:
“LGBT and foreign embassies say ‘there were not many Nazis at Maidan, maybe about 10 percent of real ideological ones,’” Karas remarked. “If not for those eight percent [of neo-Nazis] the effectiveness [of the Maidan coup] would have dropped by 90 percent.”
The 2014 Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instrumental role of neo-Nazis, he proclaimed.
RE: Semantics - It could be that "coup" is not entirely correct. I suppose the proper word would be "putsch" - especially given that it was executed by Nazis.
