“Yanokovych was sacked after committing high treason on 17th December 2013.”
LOL, some of you people are really off your rocker, Yanukovych might have been a corrupt politician like all the rest of them over there, but at least he thought he was doing what was in the best interests of Ukraine. Besides the $2 billion in transit fees from that gas pipeline going through there, Ukraine was also receiving other perks from Russia like subsidized energy. Yanukovych was wise to play both sides being how Ukraine sits on Russia’s border. What does Ukraine get from cozying up with NATO? A destroyed country and a huge number of dead Ukrainians. And you think Yanukovych the bad guy and Zelensky the hero? Some of you folks are really just flat out delusional.
Read the Ukrainian constitution. When doing a feal either with NATO or with the EU or with Russia, the President must have a mandate in the Parliament.
There was an overwhelming cross party mandate for the EU Free Trade Association agreement... That Yanokovych tore up at Putin’s request.
There was mixed support for NATO membership, mainly from people who have known Putin has had his eyes on Novorussiya since the 1990s.
There was minority support for a Russian deal in principle, but Yanokovych didn’t bother to consult their Parliament before signing possibly the worst deal in history for Ukraine.
That deal handed Russia the means to seize Ukraine economically and blocked Ukraine from being a stronger link in trade between Europe and Russia.
The result of his actions included a complete breakdown of Budapest, annexation of Crimea rubber-stamped from Russia by both Putin and Yanukovych, a brutal civil war, and targeting of pro-Putin Russians living in Ukraine.
A destroyed country and a huge bumber if dead Ukrainians is ultimately the consequence of actions taken in Moscow, by Russia and by Yanokovych personally.
Pinning the blame for any of that on a guy who didn’t even enter politics for another five years is pure, desperate revisionism.
Yanokovych is absolutely the biggest bad guy in this. And i hear that from Rusdians from Ukraine who’re now refugees in Europe.
One told me the fate of Nicolae Ceaușescu was too soft. They don’t want to be in NATO, they do want better relations with Rusdia, but they also want to be in the EU Free Trade Area.
Yanukovych, on Putin’s ordered, destroyed all three of their hopes.
How the hell is that “playing both sides”?
“Yanukovych might have been a corrupt politician like all the rest of them over there, but at least he thought he was doing what was in the best interests of Ukraine.”
Oh, that’s priceless! You could say the exact same thing about just about every major traitor in every history book, that sold out to the enemy big time.
They always think they’re doing it a favor. That Benedict Arnold, great bunch of lads, but his heart was in the right place. Judas Iscariot... Poor guy needed the money. Yanukovych is in good company.
Despite Yanukovych being likely to win an earlier election, Russia still poisoned one of his rivals just to make sure, and he imprisoned another on trumped up charges. That was years before Euromaidan.
Putin’s always wanted him to be the President. And Yanukovych has always been subservient to Putin. Yanukovych is Ukraine’s answer to Belarus’ Lukashenko... Another grubby, grasping, thieving Putin hand puppet who could easily have played the middle man between Europe and Russia but instead sold out to Russia... and took a huge kickback while opening gates for the Russian occupying forces.
Granted, until Russia had Crimea handed to it on a plate by Yanukovych, most pro-Russian Ukrainians had no idea just how deep in Putin’s pocket their president was until he literally handed it over without a debate. If he’d been allowed to stand in the 2014 election I doubt even Donbass would’ve voted for him.
A similar story is unfolding in Kherson. Russia’s preferred city administrator got 2% of the vote in 2020. By some accounts he’s planning to flee to Crimea because not only does the Ukrainian population want to see him dangling from a lamp post, the Russian citizenry wouldn’t mind that either.