Russia and Ukraine

[pocaracas]

Do the Ukrainians want to be ruled by a Russian puppet government? I'd say that the 2014 revolution and subsequent elections suggest otherwise.

This seems like a good question to me. The answer depends in part on whom we define as "the Ukrainians." 

The Ukrainians in the eastern part of the country, especially in the regions that were added to Ukraine by Lenin in 1922, think of themselves as Russian. They speak Russian, they prefer a pro-Russian government, if not exactly a "puppet" one. 

Yeah... One could say the same about Crimea...
https://www.refworld.org/docid/469f38ec2.html

• Oct 18, 1921 The Soviet Union establishes the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Russian SFSR. The autonomous republic is run as a Tatar enclave within the Russian SFSR.
  
• May 18, 1944 Stalin begins mass deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea for collaborating with the Germans during World War II. Most are settled in Uzbekistan. It is estimated that as many as 46.2% of Crimean Tatars perished in the aftermath (Allworth 1988). (The low end of estimates put the number around 20%.)
  
• Jun 30, 1945 The Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic is stripped of its autonomous status as a result of the alleged crimes of the Crimean Tatar people during World War II. It becomes merely an oblast of the Russian SFSR. Russian emigration into the Crimea under Soviet authority has been going on since before the Great War, but Stalin accelerates the migration of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians into Crimea in the aftermath of the Tatar resettlement.
  
• Apr 29, 1954 Under Khrushchev, the Soviet Union transfers the Crimea from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. This move is done in marking the 300th anniversary of the Pereiaslav Agreement which, in large part, marked the beginning of Ukrainian subjugation to the Muscovite Empire. The official party line has declared this the beginning of the long Russo-Ukrainian friendship.
  

And in 2014, Putin decides to undo this, but Ukraine was no longer in the USSR, just like it's not today, and nor is Easter Ukraine.
Because of that, there is no legitimacy undo what was done in the USSR days.

If the majority of the people in there want to be in Russia, then... those people need to interact with the central governments (Ukraine and Russia) and negotiate their departure. Did they?
If the Ukrainian central government doesn't want to give up that land, then I suppose they are in their right, much like the UK is in retaining Scotland or Spain is in retaining Catalonia. You see their motivation to support Ukraine in retaining its "breakaway" regions, huh?

Note that of the many people who have fled Ukraine in the past year, over 2 million have gone to Russia. 

If you lived all your life on the eastern part of Ukraine and spoke Russian, would you escape war by moving through extra war in the rest of Ukraine to Europe, or move towards Russia a few tens of km away?
People are pratical when it comes to staying alive, not patriotic.

All this to say that this statistic is not as meaningfull as you may want to make it seem.

Anyone who wants more tanks, more weapons, more fighting, is a childish macho man, and pro-war. Just because we don't like one side or the other, that doesn't make it anti-war to support more war.

Jee... I wonder which side first brought hundreds of thousads of troops in?