The Russians were Russians that were born and grew up in Russia. They spoke Russian and the schools were all Russian. The Russian religion was also different than the Ukraine religion to some degree. Russia broke up and they were pushed to Ukraine. After 3 years they wanted out Ukraine. The Russians were still getting their Social Security from Russia. After the joining, a lot of Ukrainians moved to the Donbass areas. But the population was still 77% Russian. It was a great mistake to have the Donbass people join Ukraine.
At the same time that the Donbass joined, Ukraine declared Ukrainian as the official state language. The proto-Ukrainian version. Which was very hard for the Russians to learn.
Google - How many times Ukrainian language was banned?
Ukrainian writers, poets, playwrights, professors, and other members of the intelligentsia were censured, imprisoned, or executed. In the years of the Russian empire and USSR, Ukrainian was banned in some form more than 60 times, and the Russian language was forced upon the population.
When Ukraine was part of Russia, the statues Russia put up were of Russian heroes who freed Ukraine from Germany. The problem was, Ukraine was on Germany’s side during the war. The US has brought neo-Nazis Ukrainians to the US to train them to fight the Russian population of Ukraine. Just in Kiev alone last year 237 streets, squares, avenues, and boulevards were renamed, and many are named after Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. Add that to the new statues be erected of Nazi collaborators. Over 50,000 streets have been renamed and some towns also renamed. The Ukrainian population is mostly against the renaming of streets and towns. But with the US backed dictator they can’t do much about that. Anything Russian has been mostly destroyed in Ukraine. Your tax dollar at work.
Ukraine has closed Russian churches. Basically, shut down all Ukraine Russian media. Not just to do with Russians, political rivals too. Socialism and communism are banned, left-wing activists are persecuted and imprisoned, and neo-Nazism is becoming state policy. All major newspapers and TV stations not politically in step with the state have been closed. Zelensky has jailed his political rivals. Don’t forget he shut down the voting too?
The Ukraine Holodomor Remembrance Day holiday. Joseph Stalin’s regime, harsh and repressive policies were imposed upon Ukraine, including a deliberate famine that killed millions of innocent Ukrainian women, men, and children. There was starvation in Russia. Russia took food from Ukraine for the starving people in upper Russia. That cause about 3 million Ukrainians to starve to death. Putting Russians under Ukraine control looked like a real dumb mistake.
It has become obvious to me that Ukraine Government is never going to treat the Russians living in Ukraine with respect. Most likely why they wanted out of the deal three years after joining. Any way you look at it, the war really started in 1994, not 2014. The deaths were Russian, so they didn’t count. Putin tried to get the EU and US to stop the suppression of the Ukraine Russians. That was not going to happen because the system we use needs an enemy to keep us from looking at D.C. And Russia is that enemy.