Memes

Ukraine consists of a number of different ethnic groups. The eastern part of Ukraine used to be Russia before the revolution, and is largely populated by ethnic Russians. After the 2014 coup, eastern parts of Ukraine rebelled and it's been in a civil war ever since. The slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 provide a good background. First, here's the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:

here's how the election in 2004 went:

this is the 2010 election:

As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:

The civil war has been going on for the 8 years since the coup, and the goal of subjugating the people of Donbass has been openly stated by the regime. For example, here's Poroshenko saying openly saying that the goal was to terrorize the people into submission. Here's a clip of CNN reporting on the regime attacking civilians. There's also a whole documentary with lots of interviews of civilians.

In 2022, LPR and DPR appealed to Russia to intervene, and that's how the current war started. Incidentally, it's pretty much modelled on how NATO invaded Yugoslavia when they recognized the autonomy of the separatist regions and intervened on their behalf.