This Almost Makes Me Want to Watch the News Again! The various popular uprisings keep spreading--now it is the Ukraine. The issue is whether to develop economically with the EU or with the Russian equivalent. No doubt the "gut feeling" in the West is that they should go with the EU. I am not sure I agree. If the choice is some sort of trade agreement like Norway has with the EU through what is called EFTA, then this would be my obvious choice. But that does not seem to be the offer on the table. Russia may have offered a genuinely better deal centered around fuel subsidies.
The EU has many, many issues that I will talk about soon. While you wait for that I offer this, the winning song from the Ukraine in the Eurovision contest in 2004. The singer is prominent in the protest now occurring.
(Full disclosure: my father-in-law is Ukrainian and my wife is Russian. Such ethnic combinations are common in Russia, and the large number of ethnic Russians orphaned by the end of the Soviet Union is a big part of the crisis.)