Russia started the Issue in the Donbass region.
I didn't know that so Ukraine was Fighting with the Russians back then.
The people in that area supposedly wanted to be Russian ? is that correct.
Officially, those were
Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists. They wanted to be recognized as a separate/sovereign state with close historical ties to Russia.
But really, its several orders of magnitude more complicated than that. Its a very long and circumvoluted story. As is anything that concerns the Russian Empire.
There is even a joke about it : "The History of Russia ( Russian Empire ) changes depending on context"
And it's true. Under the reign of that slut Catherine II, and then Alexander I, History was basically rewritten in Nikolay Karamzin's magnum opus
"History of the Russian State" ( 1816-1821, I think.)
Relevant informations in the litterature is hard to find but not impossible, thank God for the existence of old libraries and National Archives.
The day before the engagement, the Kremlin published an hour long video where Putin essentially explained that Ukraine as a country never really existed and recognized Donbas' Republics as independent States.
Medvedev even cynically calls Ukraine "Country 404"
Conflicts between ethnic Russians,
Russian-speaking Ukrainians and
Ukrainian-speaking nationalists is a big problem nobody is willing to talk about. Poroshenko did everything he could to escalate those tensions.
Many feel betrayed by Kiev.
The pseudo-legal basis invoked by the Russian Fedsration to engage it's troops on Ukrainian soil in 2022 was
The United Nations Charter, Chapter VII:
Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression.Article 51 "in the exercise of the right of self-defence"
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
.....hence the "Special Military Operation" term officially coined with this conflict.