In retrospect, absolutely. THEY had/have the makings of a civilized European state: Rule of Law, human rights, a succession principle, a market economy, (albeit riddled with leftover Soviet corruptocrats).
They had territorial integrity as a non aligned state.
"non-aligned" in Moscow-speak means "we require a noose around your neck". And sure enough, Moscow yightened the noose by "inducing" Yanukovich to sign on to a Moscow-centric alignment agreement. Which in turn induced 800,000 rank and file Ukrainians to protest.
Once Yanukovich's thugs started beating his own citizens, and an imported Russian team of snipers started killing them with rifles, any moral or legal obligation to "remain non-aligned" was dead, dead, dead.
WIKI
The first deaths occurred on Unity Day, 22 January, during riots on Hrushevskoho Street in Kyiv, where three activists: Serhiy Nigoyan, Mykhailo Zhyznevskyi and Roman Senyk [uk] were shot dead by security forces. On the same day, the dead body of activist Yuriy Verbytsky [uk] was found on the city outskirts; he had been kidnapped a day before with Ihor Lutsenko, who was released.
then Prime Minister Mykola Azarov in a BBC interview said that police had not been issued firearms, and said no police officers were located on the rooftops around the protest area. He stated that the shooting of protesters was a provocation by extremist forces aimed at escalating violence
On 18 February, protesters attempted to march from Independence Square to the parliament building, to urge politicians to vote for constitutional amendments. Clashes broke out as their path was blocked by riot police, who tried to push them back to Maidan. Eleven protesters were killed or fatally wounded. Three of them were shot dead by police; the rest died of other injuries. Four police officers were also shot and killed.
Later that evening and into the early hours of 19th February, the security forces launched an operation to clear Independence Square. Small groups of titushky (government loyalists) also gathered nearby. Clashes broke out between the security forces and protesters, resulting in the deaths of seventeen protesters and five police officers. Most of the protesters were shot by police. Two others died when police set the Trade Union building on fire, and another was found dead with his throat slit. A journalist, Viacheslav Veremii, was beaten and shot dead by titushky for filming them. The five police officers died from gunshot wounds.
On the morning of 20 February, riot police massed at the edge of the Maidan camp on Independence Square. At around 9am, two Berkut officers were shot dead. Around the same time, protesters tried to push the security forces away from the Maidan and back up Instytutska Street. The security forces fired indiscriminately on the protesters from ground level, while snipers fired on protesters from above. By midday, 48 protesters had been shot dead on Instytutska Street, as had two other police officers. According to the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, special forces (Berkut) and Interior Troops snipers shot at people on Maidan and/or snipers located in nearby buildings, with the special forces firing AK-47 assault rifles. 20 February was the bloodiest day of the clashes, with at least 21 protesters killed.
The final death toll from these clashes in late February was 103 protesters and 13 police. According to Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Oleh Zalisko [uk] in February, 184 people sustained gunshot wounds in Kyiv and over 750 suffered bodily injury. On 20 February, the (then) opposition parties (Batkivshchyna, UDAR and Svoboda) stated “To hold talks with the regime, the policies of which led to the deaths of many people, is an extremely unpleasant thing but we must do everything possible and even the impossible to prevent further bloodshed”.
In June 2016, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine announced that forensic examinations had matched bullets removed from the victims’ bodies with the assault rifles of the Berkut. In the years since the revolution, the Office of the Prosecutor General has identified 27 Berkut officers involved in the 20 February shootings of protesters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidan_casualties
The reality is you know nothing about them, otherwise, you wouldn’t said what you said. They have one of the largest human trafficking operations in the world, drug smuggling, organ harvesting, they are renowned for their money laundering operation, just to name a few. They are not the idyllic society that you fantasize it to be.
THEY had/have the makings of a civilized European state: Rule of Law...
Surely you jest.
Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries on the planet.