They simply do not want to bend over to oligarchs any more, it does not matter whether these oligarchs are leaning to Russia or EU. They are saying GTFO to _both_.

Also I hope you are not suggesting that opinions should be somehow filtered based on whether a poster has a Russian name.

Correct. I happen to be a Russian-speaking Ukrainian and I am much more in favor of Ukraine being more open to the west and breaking away from Russia, but I know that's not the only opinion. The fact that not everybody agrees is in my opinion unfortunate because Russia has no interest in investing in Ukraine's future.

> Also I hope you are not suggesting that opinions should be somehow filtered based on whether a poster has a Russian name.

Not in the slightest. I am suggesting that people who don't know much about the situation do their own research rather than trusting comments on the several stories that ended up on HN in the past few days. There is a lot of bias here, especially pro-Russian bias. I would like to see people not directly involved with the situation form their own opinions based on facts.

Seems like it does, based on the bailout money it offered. Even then, Russia and (Eastern) Ukraine have strong cultural/historical/etc connections, so these issues are quite sensitive to many people, and should not be seen as an EU vs. "evil Putin" matter. Neither should one blame ordinary Russians for having a different opinion on this.

Whoa, so him almost signing euroassociation papers (doing all the necessary work) was a very pro-Russian move?

Did it mystically became ready to go, or did Yanukovych's apparatus made concrete steps to getting the EU treaty ready despite being Russian puppet?

If he is a Russian puppet, how this EU treaty ever got on the table?

I.e. get EU treaty ready to be signed, extract power from Russia based on the fear of this treaty going live. And then try to extract more power from EU based on the fear that Russians are overtaking.

But that's not what puppets do.