That's not what it says. Your refusal to engage with evidence has you pretending you found a gotcha because you assume anything that disagrees with you has to be based on a flawed premise.

You're literally ignoring the facts he presented (maidan was a coup, Donbas collectively decided to secede in a referendum). The people of the Donbas were resisting an attempted genocide as much as Gazans, you can listen to Poroshenko's statements about bombing their hospitals, having their women and children hiding in basements, you can see the indiscriminate shelling of civilian centers. Both of them were propped up by your government (the lapdog of the only empire on earth rn), and by you personally, from your stupid refusal to acknowledge actual imperialism and pretending the enemies of the State Department must be the enemies of all of us everywhere.

I didn't say any of that shit.

What I did was state a couple objective historical facts and then ask a question, one that none of the downvoters and none of the people who have replied to me (including you) have anything resembling an answer to.

All y'all do when you get confronted by something you can't answer is downvote, fall back on lazy talking points, block, and ignore it. This makes your criticism very hard to take seriously, you just parrot the news, with no investigation or critical thought.

Not all of modern Ukraine was part of Russia before the USSR, btw. When I said "it" I was referring specifically to the Donbass. Donbass was given to Ukraine, perhaps in the hope that the Russian population would influence the politics of the Ukrainian SSR in a way that was more cooperative with the rest of the Union. This is simply a fact, and astute readers will note that it's mostly tangential to my actual question, except in that establishes that many Russians have lived there historically.

In Ukraine in general, ~68% speak Ukranian natively, ~17% are native Ukranian/Russian bilingual, ~14% are native Russian speakers.

In the Donbas, ~27% Ukrainian native speakers, ~29% bilinguals, ~42% Russian native speakers.

Going by nationality:

~73% of Ukranian nationals natively speak Ukranian.

~18% of Ukranian nationals are bilingual natives.

~9% of Ukranian nationals natively speak Russian.

~4% of Russian nationals natively speak Ukranian.

~14% of Russian nationals are bilingual.

~81% of Russian nationals natively speak Russian.

All these numbers are from 2017.

...

I think it is safe to say that there are in fact many Ukranians in Ukraine, even many Ukranians in Donbas, at least prior to 2022... due to, you know, the ethnic cleansing undertaken by an occupying foreign national army.

My napkin math on those numbers works out to 53% Russian nationals vs 46% Ukranian nationals in Donbas in 2017.

Using a 53% Russian vs 46% Ukranian proportion to justify mass military force against the Ukranian population in Donbas is roughly the same logic that would conclude it is morally correct to invade Los Angeles and deport everyone who isn't fluent in English, which has similar proportions between English and Spanish.

Ah yes, they are just "confused Russians" who speak a different language because of the ebul West.

Hey let's switch examples and see if your logic stands up. The name Los Angeles is Spanish. Because Spanish speakers have been there longer than English speakers. If the Spanish speakers don't like the president of the United States, does that mean it's perfectly acceptable for the Mexican government to provide Spanish speaking protesters in LA with artillery systems and missile batteries? Or is that fucking weird?

A downvote is not an answer btw.