No idea about Lugansk, but in Donetsk they certainly don't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_People%27s_Republic#Re....

I don't really trust Wikipedia much. It has been manipulated for a long time and often chooses only sources for the narrative of the page author. Polls at this point have demonstrated themselves as unreliable and inaccurate.

The link was to offer a different perspective than the one prevailing this topic. I don't think it's so simple as Russia bad. There are a lot of information wars going on, not mention the posturing for constituents with shallow talking points.

It's never as simple as "<whoever> bad". But in the end it's (or perhaps should be) down to numbers: Wikipedia cites several sources which show that whatever citizen's preference between Ukraine or Russia might be, there was definitely no majority support for separation - not before and not after. Do you know sources that show opposite results?

Well, first of all, these two regions (Donetsk, Luhansk) were part of Ukraine since at least 1922, when the borders of republics of Soviet Union were drawn. They were 'part of Russia', only when whole Ukraine was part of Russia. And no, Crimean Tatars are not indigenous people of East of Ukraine, Crimea and Donbass are very different regions with different history.

You base your opinion from an article by guy who knows some Russian nationalists, who do not believe in Ukraine sovereignty. Somehow you extrapolate their opinion on the whole region.

There are plenty of people, more than 1 million, who left separatist controlled regions for 'mainland' Ukraine (that also meant that they lost their property, most of people in Ukraine own their apartment/house, so that is a big deal).

There are plenty of people from Donbass region who volunteered into Ukrainian army to fight separatists.

Ukraine is a big country, with long, varied history, and multi-ethnic regions. That doesn't mean that invading this country is justified. There is Hungarian community in the west of Ukraine, would it be ok for Hungary to invade?

That article that you've posted is comically strange.

"Like most conflicts over the past 2,000 years, this is, at heart, a religious war. Most of the people who live in the tiny eastern province of Donbas and surrounds, including the Crimea, are followers of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate. And about 15% of the Donbas is Muslim."

tiny eastern province of Donbas - if you take the size of Donbass as the size of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, 26517 km sq + 26 684 km sq, so 53 thousand sq kilometers. To put it into context, Belgium is 30 thousand sq km, Netherlands is 40 thousand sq km. So Donbass region is bigger than Netherlands in size. In terms of population it is more than 6 million people.

And about 15% of the Donbas is Muslim -- that is simply not true, by a very big margin.

"When Yunokovych, an Easterner who allied himself with Russia, was reelected in 2014, the Kyiv nationalists seized the capital. The insurrectionists were led by Yulia Tymoshenko who had lost the 2010 Presidential race.

Yanukovich was not re-elected in 2014, presidential term in Ukraine is five years. In November of 2013, protests in Kyiv and in other Ukrainian cities started after Yanukovich declined the association treaty with EU. The way that Yanukovich suppresed those protests sparked a much more powerful reaction, with the main demand for him to step down. Most people in Kyiv and in Central and Western Ukraine supported those protests, not only radical Ukrainian nationalists. Protests continued until late February 2014, when around a hundred protesters were shot by snipers on the main square in Kyiv. That sparked a powerful reaction, with Yanukovich fleeing to Russia. In May of 2014 there were re-elections, where Petro Poroshenko won. In 2019 Volodymyr Zelenskiy won in the scheduled elections.

Yulia Tymoshenko was not leading protests, she was literally in jail.