In a country where the average person only makes about $7 thousand a year, a declining economy, and a possibly corrupt president, Ukraine had a glimmer of hope and progress. That hope and progress was shut down by their president. This possible hope and progress was a deal to join the European Union and the president that swiftly rejected the deal was Viktor Yanukovich. Once the deal was rejected, peaceful occupation movements started across the country asking for the resignation of Yanukovich. It is time that Yanukovich stepped down.

On Nov. 22, 2013, Yanukovich officially declined the agreement from the EU. The EU is a political and economic union of 28 states from Europe. The EU is run through a coalition of multi-national, independent organizations and intergovernmental departments.

The deal that was offered to Ukraine by the EU, did not give them membership to the EU but gave them a free trade pact and a promise for financial aid.

“The agreement is far short of E.U. membership, or even candidacy for membership, but it includes a free-trade pact and promises of financial aid that Ukraine, in dire straits, desperately needs,” said Serge Schmemann, a journalist for the New York Times.

The protests that began as a couple thousand people in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, soon escalated to hundreds of thousands of people after a few journalists were brutally beaten by a riot control force, even though the journalists were just attempting to ask them questions.

“On Nov. 21, summoned by a Facebook post by a journalist named Mustafa Nayem, more than 15 hundred Ukrainians showed up in Independence Square in Kiev to protest their government’s decision to “pause” preparations for signing an association agreement with the European Union. The next day more crowds gathered in Kiev and other cities. Soon, the protesters numbered over 100 thousand” wrote Oleh Kotsyuba, a journalist for the New York Times.

“Yet Ukrainians, despite poverty and cynicism, care. Viktor Yanukovich had raised hopes for integration, and Parliament had passed measures that would move Ukraine toward compliance with the terms necessary to sign an association agreement and form a free trade zone with the European Union. Polls showed that a strong majority of Ukrainians supported integration with Europe, even in the East, the region most oriented toward Russia,” continued Kotsyuba.

Despite the protests of the people of Ukraine, some analysts say the real enemy is not President Yanukovich, but President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

“President Vladimir Putin of Russia is fiercely opposed to the agreement. While a large majority of Russians seems to accept the idea that Ukraine is a separate country, Mr. Putin has become increasingly emotional in asserting that Ukraine belongs with Russia, and only with Russia. His pet international project is a Eurasian Union, which he depicts as a sort of eastern E.U. but Western critics view as an incipient Soviet reincarnation,” wrote Schmemann.

Whether or not it should be the resignation of Yanukovich, or someone stepping in for them to stand against Russia, something must be done to help the economy of Ukraine. People suffering in poverty is not something that should be allowed by anyone.