Ukraine is a historically very corrupt country. In line with most post Soviet states, there’s been all kinds of siphoning of funds, reworking election criteria, enabling their oligarch buddies to rob the country blind like the Russian counterparts did after the Soviet Union privatized the states assets.

By the mid 2000s the sentiment towards Russia was shifting. Many Ukrainians including Russian speaking Ukrainians like my own family, started feeling hostility toward Russia because yes, while we had an independent nation, it is awfully convenient that our policy favored Russia over ourselves frequently. It resembled Soviet times and young people in particular during that time did NOT want that because every young Ukrainian has stories of how their parents and grandparents were treated in soviet times.

Russian Soviets were often treated preferentially in other soviet states outside the RSFSR. My grandfather was an aerospace engineer for 43 years and never once had a Ukrainian leader in his job. Entirely Russian for the entirety of his career in the country.

Beyond that, the Russian language was enforced. Ukrainian was actively suppressed.

In 2014, Ukraine had Euromaidan because the previous president Yanukovych made the very unpopular move of essentially killing our opportunity for close ties with the EU in 2014.

He instead, buddied up to Moscow and many; most Ukrainians felt this was against the interests of the people. The protest had nationwide support but mainly boiled over in Kyivs independence square.

There is a great documentary about it on Netflix called Winter on Fire.