The two blue regions on this map of Ukraine recently declared independence, which was recognized by Russia on Monday. Then Russian missile strikes in to these areas began today, to overthrow the Ukrainian government and military in those areas

submitted by magnora7 from americanpost.news

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[–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

This is Russia's justification for the action. They've also said there is no boots on the ground, so it's not technically an invasion.

If you look at a map of Ukrane's ethnic regions, you can see these eastern regions (and Crimea) are the most Russian areas of Ukraine: https://i2.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/Russians_Ukraine_2001.PNG/640px-Russians_Ukraine_2001.PNG

So Russia is trying to annex these states, it seems, now that these regions have "declared independence" through Russia. But obviously the Ukrainian government doesn't want this, and didn't recognize the claim to independence apparently. It's being framed as them "declaring independence" but I don't see how this is the case if they belong to Russia. Russia is just annexing them. The idea they are going to be "independent" is an absolute misnomer if Russia is just running their governments.

So now in those dark blue regions of the OP map, it's basically Russia-annxers vs the people who want to remain with Ukraine's Federal Govt (vs the people who want to remain independent from both, but I'm guessing their army is too small).

[–]BravoVictor 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That's understandable. Whether they're independent or vote to join Russia or just get annexed by Russia, the one thing we know is that those areas are overwhelmingly ethnically Russian, and have faced harassment from Kiev for years and it's largely been the locals fighting. Not Russian troops.

Kiev's been conducting a hot war and economic war against the east for years.

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21730

"Among the causes, a cumbersome verification procedure introduced in 2016 deprived more than 400,000 citizens of Ukraine of their pensions."

i.e. Ukrainians, who worked for the government in Kiev for years, were just financially cut off unless they moved out of the Donbass region. It's hard to argue Donbass is part of Ukraine when Kiev treats it like a foreign country, and the bulk of civilian deaths have occurred there at the hands of the Kiev military.

https://www.crisisgroup.org/content/conflict-ukraines-donbas-visual-explainer

[–]On-Point 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Not Russian troops.

Bullshit.