[blackeyeblitzar]

That may be true but the democratic process was not followed in the end. If you look at the previous election, regions from Luhansk to Crimea were strong supporters of Yanukovych. Those people basically lost their vote as a result of the Maidan revolution / protest / coup / whatever. Should they be required to remain in Ukraine, assuming they don’t want to?

I’m interested in learning more about what you know regarding the Putin blackbail and Europe backfill though - got any sources?

[throwaway48476]

They "lost their vote"? Yanukovych fled, that was his choice. It also ignores the donbas voters who voted for him because of the EU treaty. And they held elections after in which donbas votes counted the same as everyone else. Donbas also voted for Ukraine independence from the Soviet union in the 90s.

Putin demanded yanukovych cancel the EU treaty and instead sign a treaty with Russia. He threatened to stop selling Ukraine gas below market rate. This is the same way he controls lukashenko. Yanukovych went to the Europeans and begged them to make up what Ukraine would lose paying market rate but they refused. So he was forced to cancel the EU treaty which he didn't want to do because he knew what would happen. Rock and a hard place. He was corrupt but not stupid.

>Yanukovych stood for economic modernisation, greater economic ties with the EU, and military non-alignment.

>In November 2013, Yanukovych suddenly withdrew from signing an association agreement with the EU, amidst economic pressure from Russia.

From the Wikipedia.

[blackeyeblitzar]

Didn’t he flee because he was at risk of harm? That still doesn’t remove him from the presidency. There’s a process for that which wasn’t followed - the vote isn’t a substitute.

[throwaway48476]

He fled because literally half of kyiv was protesting. He was going to get impeached because he spent 15 years being pro EU and then reneged.

He ordered the berkut to shoot protesters so he might have been charged with crimes for that.

[blackeyeblitzar]

Why wasn’t he impeached? Isn’t that the right way to handle it?

[pvg]

His security forces started shooting protesters? You can just look this stuff up.

[throwaway48476]

He got in a helicopter and fled to Moscow before that could happen.

[mopsi]

Yanukovych fled because even his own party turned on him after police snipers killed over a hundred people. Instead of securing a political deal with other parties to safeguard his future (as he had hoped), he faced the possibility of arrest and criminal prosecution. So he just ran away before it could happen, left Ukraine for Russia and never returned.

Ukraine's parliament assembled and unanimously scheduled a snap presidential election, which was held a few months later. The Ukrainian people subsequently elected a new president.