There was considerable opposition to the Orange Revolution that ousted a sort of caretaker post-Soviet government.

Some liked Yanukovich because he wasn't Western. They never liked Tymoshenko because she was more pro-Western. Her corruption was glaring, and needed to be dealt with. Yanukovich's? Well, everybody does it. Her repression was blacker than sin. His repression? Well, it's none of our business.

The US makes a phone call, it's meddling in internal affairs. Yanukovich meets with ministers from Russia, talks extensively with Russia, etc.., well, that's just local politics. Russia is local to the Ukraine. But anything from the Carpathians West is distinctly "overseas", so Hungary and Poland cannot be local to Ukraine. Adjacent borders don't count. It's a new, "deeper" meaning of "locality." It's reminiscent of calling the Baltics "occupied"; it provoked an outcry from some who seemed to want to say that Pinochet's Chile was "occupied" by the capitalist running sharks of canine imperialism.

One recent article I saw about what's going on in Venezuela struck me as an amusing self-parody--the main point was that Venezuela's to be supported by "progressives" because they resist Western imperialism. I've seen the same point made for Iran. It's not about Venezuela, Iran, or even Ukraine, it's about domestic politics fought by proxy with those local political parties that oppose "Western-like" movements as true representatives of the good and just whatever versus other political parties as completely agentless, volitionless, marionettes.