[kovalkos]

This is my rough understanding of what's going on:

Ukraine wants to increase cooperation with Europe, and possibly join EU. This would undermine it's relationship with Russia.

The previous Ukranian president, Viktor Yushchenko, usually sided with the West, and current president, Viktor Yanukovych, wants to preserve friendship with Russia.

Russia obviously doesn't want to lose allies, so it threatened to stop trading, and impose strict sanctions on Ukraine if they agreed to partnership with Europe.

Some Ukrainians dislike Yanukovych for siding with Russia instead of Europe, thus causing protests.

If you have more knowledge about this situation, feel free to correct me if I err.

[computer]

When you say "Ukraine wants to increase cooperation with Europe", who do you mean by "Ukraine"?

The president? The people in the west (i.e. the ones protesting here)? The people in the east who only speak Russian?

[budnyk]

Everybody does! Here on east of Ukraine everybody wants freedom of speech, goverment w/o corruption, 3g internet.

[oddx]

You should also add that everybody wants to have well payed job. Question is "Which move would be better?". I think problem is that Ukrainians split in two roughly equal parts: pro-EU and pro-Russia (Yanukovych would not win recent election otherwise) and it's almost impossible to have consensus.