[somenameforme]

Thanks for the links - those are interesting and great resources that I hadn't seen before. But I am not arguing that Russia was not trying to apply pressure to Ukraine, but rather that it had basically nothing to do with their decision. Yanukovych wanted to go with the EU because he thought he could get tens of billions of dollars doing so. When a country sends tens of billions of dollars to another extremely corrupt country, that's going to make the political leaders of that country (as well as their associated friends/businesses) extremely rich. But it turns out the EU was not at all interested in such a thing, nor was the IMF - whom he also approached. Russia, to a lesser degree, was.

I think the timelines also support this. As per your link, the customs arrangement between Ukraine and Russia was terminated on August 14th. As per the Reuters link, Yanukovych was actively hostile to joining the Eurasian Customs Union a month later, and only sided with Russia about 4 months later. He only seems to have only finally changed his mind once it became clear that not only was he not going to get rich(er) off the EU or the IMF, but he also got Russia to offer him $15 billion as well as sharply lowering the prices paid by Naftogaz - a Ukrainian state run gas company that was headed by a Yanukovych appointee - Yevhen Bakulin, who has a fun rabbit hole to go down, in his own right.