Yanukovych says that even if he could turn back time, he still wouldn't sign the EU deal. Look at what Brussels put on the table in 2013.

The EU offered €610 million, on condition that Kiev sign a loan deal with the IMF. "We don't have to be humiliated like this," Yanukovych told Ukrainian TV, adding that the IMF wanted higher taxes and frozen salaries and pensions.

Russia bought about a quarter of Ukraine's exports, and Ukraine's machine-building and aircraft plants worked largely for Russian customers. He warned the deal would wreck whole sectors of the economy.

On November 21, 2013, Kiev put the deal on hold. Less than a month later, Moscow offered $15 billion in loans and cut the gas price by a third.

He was never against closer ties with Europe, he says. He refused to sign a deal that, in his words, betrayed Ukraine's national interests. The Maidan protests began the night he put it on hold, and three months later he was overthrown.

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