( CNN ) -- After months of protest , sudden and dramatic events have swept across Ukraine , boosting some and diminishing others . With questions swirling about where the president is , who 's in charge and what will happen next , to say there 's uncertainty about the future of this country of 44.5 million is an enormous understatement . But some early winners and losers seem to be emerging from the chaos that shook Kiev last week as security forces and protesters battled to a bloody standstill that left dozens dead and earned the rebuke of Western powers . Losers . President Viktor Yanukovych : His own party abandoned him as lawmakers voted unanimously to oust him from office . He 's facing criminal charges stemming from the deadly crackdown on protesters last week . Russia : Russian officials were mostly sidelined last week as European foreign ministers negotiated the peace deal that ended the violence . Ukraine 's opposition appears to be steering the country toward Europe . But Moscow still retains some bargaining chips : supply lines that provide most of Ukraine 's natural gas , a huge naval base in the autonomous Ukrainian republic of Crimea and heavy Russian influence on culture , language and business in eastern Ukraine . Eastern Ukraine : This hotbed of pro-Russian sentiment has n't seen the sort of rabble-rousing that 's upended much of the rest of the country . But that does n't mean the people who live here are n't thinking about it , reports CNN 's Fred Pleitgen . `` Certainly , there are a lot of pro-Russians in the east of the country who are very afraid of what might happen next , who are afraid that their culture , their heritage are in danger , who feel that the Russian language -- which has always had a special status here in Ukraine -- might be in danger of becoming marginalized as well , '' he reported Monday from Kharkiv . Winners . Yulia Tymoshenko : The former revolutionary leader and prime minister , freed from prison after the peace deal was signed , has clearly gained in the past few days . She had been imprisoned since 2007 on what Western observers and many Ukrainians felt were politically motivated charges related to a gas deal with Russian provider Gazprom . She took a position of honor on the Independence Square stage Saturday , setting herself up as a possible presidential candidate . `` Today , Ukraine has finished with this terrible dictator , '' she told protesters Saturday after her release . `` There 'll be no Ukraine but the Ukraine you want . And I 'm the guarantor of that Ukraine . '' Ukraine 's opposition : They took over Kiev 's Independence Square for months , held their own against much more heavily armed security forces and then flooded across Kiev to take control when those security forces vanished in the wake of the peace deal . Still , the mood in Kiev was somber as protesters honored those killed in last week 's fighting . `` This is a lesson for our country and a lesson that will help us to prevent this from happening ever in this country again , '' one protester said . European Union : Europe is riding high in the wake of the peace deal largely brokered by foreign ministers from Poland , Germany and France who traveled to Kiev to help solve the crisis . It 's unclear what 's next for the European Union and Ukraine , which until late last year were discussing a trade deal that focused on economic modernization in return for long-term aid . But EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton was in Kiev on Monday to talk .
Ukraine 's sudden political transformation helps some , hurts others . Comment: Looking up : Opposition icon Yulia Tymoshenko , the protest movement and the EU .