The thing is, joining the EU was not even on the table. However ordinary Ukrainians were led to believe that it was.
What was on the table is a Ukraine-EU trade agreement (not the same as joining EU), which had a lot of strings attached to it like austerity measures which would have been unpopular among the Ukrainians.
The Russians offere Yanukovich a 15 billion dollar loan and a 33% gas discount "... and didn’t ask Yanukovych to change much of anything..."
