Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Donbas is and was a clusterfúck of epic proportions. A Ukrainian woman I knew when I was asking about her country in general it came up and she described the place as "your Northern Ireland Troubles on steroids". Oh and that was just over a decade ago, so long before Crimea and the civil war stuff. She was from the western part of Ukraine, but had a background mix of Russian and Ukrainian like quite a percentage would.

Post the USSR going bang, people in those regions voted to not stay with Russia(IIRC by a large majority), but it seems to get complicated after that, with a large part of that complexity coming from Ukraine's back and forth Russian influence and corrupt oligarchs in government. Since that shifted and after Crimea it got more complex and more heated. I suppose and this is only supposition; when the Ukrainian government were on the other end of the phoneline to Moscow, any seperatist ideas were quiet enough, but when that changed....

And someone would want to be high on glue to not think that Ukrainian interests as well as Russian weren't fomenting and supporting trouble and torturing and killing people depending on which side they were on. There are enough independent reports that paint both as utter dicks supporting their side in this. The Donbas has and is being fought over like two mangy dogs at a bone and if you don't believe the Yanks weren't fleas on one dog I have magic beans to sell you.

And I agree with the Electric Sheep poster regarding quite a bit of western media. The BBC they mentioned an obvious one. The same BBC were having their usual moral panic over the rise of the "Far Right" and were regularly pointing at Ukraine. So were outlets like the Guardian and US outlets like Time, NYT et al and indeed US government agency reports(they were particularly concerned with the Far Right there recruiting on social media). Since this Russian invasion, they've all suffered mass amnesia on the matter. The Beeb even "fact checking" Azov and pulling back hard from their previous position and that yeah there are some "nazis" but it's only a minority y'know. A complete about face. The reality is likely somewhere in the middle. The other joke being the BBC et al were ramping up their moral panic about nazis in Ukraine after actual electoral support for the Far Right in Ukraine declined and fell off a cliff. There was barely a peep out of them about Ukraine when the Far Right were actually in power. In essence if Ukraine had even been on your radar a couple of years ago, you'd have gotten a very different picture that you're getting now, and from the same media.

Look, we all like a simple tale of bad guys and good guys and seek out information that backs up our position, but reality is always more complex than that and make no mistake Russia are the major dicks here and have shot themselves and their cannon fodder in the face while they were at it, but the Ukrainians have become the good guys just as much by virtue of the fact that Russia have been such major dicks. Ukraine was one of the most corrupt nations in Europe, second only to Russia and yes just like Russia was cut through with Far Right Nationalists of the nasty kind. Zelensky was no saint either. Not by a long shot, but he was better than previous and the country was shifting more towards the centre and Europe, but it had a way to go. Again Russia has shot themselves in the face here too, because the majority of Ukrainians will never look to Moscow again and if they are going to walk that long road to the EU any nazi shenanigans and corruption will have to go.

Russia by being morons means no matter how much of Ukraine they end up keeping have insured that Ukraine will end up better than Russia. And what parts they do keep they can't afford to rebuild or keep and will likely be dealing with even more insurgency for years. Facepalm isn't in it.

Ukraine post 2014 functioned as a democratic government. It did not engage in murder of civilians or ethnic cleansing.

Yeah, I have some magic beans for you. You should read the various UN reports out there before the Russian invasion of this year that made amnesiacs of us all rooting for the cowboys in the white hats. But again Russia have been the bigger dicks. As usual. In the early days the level of scum behaviour was about equal, but towards the end and closer to the Russian invasion, the scum were mostly on the Russian side.