Specifically on the language issues, my Quebecker friend is going to be a bigger expert.
But certainly I agree with you. When I was there in December, as well, I met Lebanese restauranteurs from east Ukraine who were on the Maidan. This was very different from 2004, where it was east versus west. This was far more the people against the regime, in this particular case. There were non-Ukrainians on the Maidan.
On the specific question of inclusivity, of the last three presidents of Ukraine, I think Leonid Kuchma was the best in terms of this question. He was an east Ukrainian and he promoted what I would call a “soft” Ukrainian national identity, which was acceptable to both east Ukrainians and west Ukrainians.
As for the two more recent presidents, Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych, Viktor Yushchenko was seen in east Ukraine as too hard-nosed on Ukrainian identity, whereas Viktor Yanukovych was too hard-nosed on Russophile-Sovietophile identity so he rubbed up the west Ukrainians. Hence, the national identity question became an issue in the Maidan here.
You need to go back to the more inclusive Kuchma era, which was the decade from 1994 to 2004, where it combined support for Ukrainian identity and language at the same time as having respect for the Russian language. That centrist balance is often the more difficult one, but that's what you need to go back to—