> Russia has cleansed the occupied territories of ethnic Ukrainians pretty well over the last years since they took them over. Any form of "referendum" to associate with Russia is nothing more than a plain land grab, a sham election.

Without commenting your claims of supposed ethnic cleansing, I'd like to point out that such a referendum could've potentially been held before or after the Maidan coup in 2014. But since Ukraine regime decided to crush independence movement using their armed forces, people of Donbas had no other choice but to fight back and got help from whoever was willing to help them. Otherwise, this territory would be ethnically cleansed.

> In contrast, there has been no campaign in Catalonia or in Scotland to forcibly remove ethnic Spaniards/English people in order to stage a fraudulent vote.

I wish Spanish government reacted similar to British in case of Catalonia. Instead of helping to properly organize the referendum, they opted for using armed forces and criminalizing and arresting pro-independence supporters.