A few people have asked me to help understand what's going on in Ukraine, considering that I lived there and I have made Ukrainian geopolitics the area of my graduate study. Go to the bottom for the tl;dr.
Upon independence, one of the first laws passed in Ukraine basically gave a blanket pardon to anyone arrested by the Soviet regime, as it was practically impossible to tell who had been jailed for political reasons and who had not. Another law established that those who held political positions had a kind of amnesty where they could not be tried for past crimes. As a result, many gangsters and others of the criminal class entered the political arena.
At this time, everything was in a fevered state of chaos. Though there was no violent regime change, the entire political, economic, and social system had been thrown up in the air. Part of this was a transition to a market economy wherein many formerly state-owned properties and facilities were privatize