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“You are factually and historically wrong. Yanukovich was a popular President”

FACTS:
In 2014, the Presidents of Ukraine, Yanukovych, went back on his election pledge to seek cooperation with the EU. He did this because the anti corruption reforms is not what he wanted.

He moved secretly to sign a deal with Putin.

The public didn’t like his dealings with Putin and held peaceful demonstrations in Majdan. In late, 2013 a group of students protested against the fact that Yanukovich would not sign the Eastern Partnership agreement with the EU (Moldova and Georgia already had).

Yanukanuovich had used this agreement to go to Moscow and get more money from Russia in exchange for not signing. These students disagreed so they set up a protest on Kreschatyk the main street of Kyiv.
This was for months, extending to 2014.

Yanukovych government response was to send in law enforcement who beat up the protesters and sent several into the clinic. This brutality angered off more people who then started their own protest which merged with the student protest. And soon people from all ages joined for different reasons: anti-corruption, against high unemployment, the low pensions, poor life for war veterans etc. The original protest served as a catalyst that suddenly burst open the dissatisfaction for many.

He placed Russia-style limits on assembly and free speech that people yearning for freedom were NEVER going to accept peacefully. Only after the subsequent crackdowns on peaceful protestors did the protests turn violent. Things were at a standstill then Yanukovich gave orders to the Berkut, Ukrainian special police force (bit like SWAT in the US) to organize a wide spread attack to break up the protests and restore order. For this they gathered troops from outside of Kyiv too and put snipers on the rooftops. The rest is history.

A real battle followed and people died. Yanukovych sent in the militias to beat the demonstrators. That caused a larger demonstration of people asking for a change from corruption.
Yanukovych was in process of being impeached for gross corruption and was going to be removed one way or another. He said he would not step down even if impeached. The day parliament voted 73% for his impeachment, he willingly tucked tail to Russia when he knew it was inevitable.

So, Yanukovich got scared. He grabbed all the cash and jewelry he could and fled East to Donetsk where he had came from. Unfortunately for him, he had burned his bridges there as well by scamming the Donbas maffia while in office.

When he was then refused passage by the Ukrainian border guards at the Russian border Putin sent in special forces to extradite Yanukovich, his family and some of his most loyal supporters to Russia where he now lives in wealth and at the mercy of Putin should he come in useful ever again.

All Yanukovich had had to do was like those before him make some promises to the protesters, sign some symbolic legislation and then continue business as usual. Instead he chose the confrontation and lost. Note that the successor to Yanukovych was Poroshenko, a Russian speaker. Poroshenko was voted out by the people and the new president was Zelensky, another Russian speaker.