There might well be the possibility of a more pro-Russian government coming back into power in the next election cycle – let’s recall that the Orange brigade were wild with jubilation when Yushchenko took the helm back in 2004, and all he did was borrow Ukraine into a great big deep hole with “IMF” written on the cap.The IMF is of the opinion that progress cannot come without suffering, but nobody wants to be the leader that imposes suffering.
Without defending Yanukovych, the constant demonization is making him appear worse than he actually was, and his actions in the last couple of weeks have played right into his enemies’ hands as he acts guilty as sin. The Orangies have pinned everything on Yanukovych because the best plan to make people react the way you want them to react is lots of disinformation, implant early the notion that everything said by the disinformation’s target is a lie, and keep the message simple – Yanukovich gone, all happiness. Consequently Ukrainians will not want to hear that Yanukovych’s departure does not usher in a period of prosperity, but of adjustment and austerity imposed by the EU neoliberal commissars and the IMF.
I imagine the EU’s strategy will be to Europeanize it as quickly as possible against the possibility of their man being tossed out on his ear in a few years, in hope of getting standards in place that would make re-association complicated if not impossible. But let's face it the EU and US do not give a shit about the people of Ukraine; they merely wants to keep it away from Russia. And the likely hope was to be able to "modernize" it to European standards hoping that it remain the central transit country for Russian gas to Europe. If it loses its Russian markets and the gas deliveries are routed around it, the EU will just have taken on a huge country with a restive population which is dirt-poor except for its top 1%. Challenging, to say the very least.
