> The war in the Donbas was portrayed as a civil war by Russia but was actually started by and fought largely by Russian soldiers and FSB/GRU members. The former head of the DPR himself admitted this recently.
Your timeline is incorrect. As someone who has spent a good amount of time in Ukraine, it is clear you are not correctly informed.
The Maidan revolution, or Coup d'etat (which the US supported) in Feb of 2014 ended the presidency of Victor Yanokvych that had previously been considered more Pro-kremlin than his opponent.
When the revolution happened, Victoria Nuland (US State Department) was captured with US State Dept staff playing kingmakers around which politicos would become the new president.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
The Ukrainian civil war between the Eastern Ukrainians supported by Russia, and the Western Ukrainians supported by the West/NATO, eventually became the Russian invasion of Ukraine around Feb 2022 after talks broke down about Ukraine's membership in NATO which Russia opposed.
Yea they were ethnic Russians because they were just Russians from Russia.
> The Ukrainian civil war between the Eastern Ukrainians supported by Russia, and the Western Ukrainians supported by the West/NATO, eventually became the Russian invasion of Ukraine around Feb 2022 after talks broke down about Ukraine's membership in NATO which Russia opposed.
If the Russians only supported and didn’t fight themselves why were Russian FSB and GRU officers setup as heads of the new areas?. Why didn’t Ukrainians from those areas get appointed instead?.
Here’s a paper on just how involved the Russians were in Donbas, hint they didn’t support it they were directly involved.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ukraines-bloody-civil-w...
https://time.com/3893066/chechens-ukraine-war/
https://www.fpri.org/article/2019/10/five-years-of-war-in-th...