> If you want to believe that Russia had no military forces in Ukraine before 2022
that's not what i said, and supporting a warring faction doesn't really qualify as "invasion" nor "taking territory".
also, i would recommend very strict skepticism about politically sensitive content on wikipedia. it can still be useful for general timelines, but a simple check at the sources (when there are any) will reveal they tend to be overwhelmingly one-sided.
it's fine if you want to learn about, say, birds, engines or stars, though.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has established that there was no genuine separatism in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. From the get-go, these were operatives of Russian military and special services, or people under their direct control. Girkin, one of the main leaders of Russian forces in Ukraine, has confirmed the same: there was no grassroots action; it was them who started the war in 2014. Removing insignia from uniforms does not make it any less of a foreign invasion.
ECHR's lengthy verdict on the responsibility of the MH-17 shootdown lays out all the relevant facts.
without even commenting the evidence considered (mainly 'osint' claims) that ruling completely disregards the right of donbas to self-determination (wether organized or not). it was clearly a political ruling.
you know, as an european over sixty that actually voted to join the eu i have long learned that ... european courts are full of shit, as are most of the institutions of the "international rules based order" btw. i know, that's the best we have. which means we're fucked.
but funnily enough and back to the question: that ruling not even suggests the concepts of "invasion" and "territiorial gains".
one has to wonder... if donbas didn't really want to secede (or didn't know how), and it was all russian troops ... why would kiev shell residential areas in donetsk with massive civilian casualties in july of 2014? so they would actually have a reason to secede? doesn't that court full of shit have a case for that?
> that ruling completely disregards the right of donbas to self-determination
Because there are no grounds for it. The right to self-determination is the right of an ethnicity to self-govern. The people of Donbas are not a distinct ethnicity, but almost entirely either Ukrainians or Russians. That's a very clear-cut case.
> if donbas didn't really want to secede (or didn't know how)
There was no secession movement. Opinion polls placed secession in the "fringe" category. More people in Texas support secession than did in the eastern regions of Ukraine.
> The right to self-determination is the right of an ethnicity to self-govern
there isn't really a clear definition of what constitutes "a people". etnicity might be a common trait but it doesn't have to. basically if all or a considerable majority in a territory want's to self-govern, the un charter recognizes that right. in practice this right has never been honored unless these people found a way to enforce it.
> There was no secession movement
oh, there was.
prior to 2014 there was a consistent history of voting pro-russian parties, like the "party of regions". as early as in the 90s the "interfront of donbas" was advocating for regional autonomy, federal structure, recognition of russian as an official language and consultative referenda were held showing consistent support. kiev obviously ignored all this, but there was clear a will for self-govern and attachment to russia.
indeed not secession outright. secession is a bold move. that happened immediately after the coup in 2014, because all these people felt betrayed and threatened (and with good reason). excuse me if they weren't as orgnaized as the eu would demand. one irony of that eu ruling is not only that it fails to consider the right to self-determination, but that it recognizes the ukranian government as the administrator of donbas completely obviating the fact that that was an ilegitimate government, installed by a foreign power (we have victoria nuland on record reciting her staff picks for that) after ousting the elected government, that then immediately started to exert discrimination against culturally russian ukranians, particularly in donbas. it all went to hell form there.
> there isn't really a clear definition of what constitutes "a people".
It's true that the wording is open to interpretation, but not in the case of Ukraine. Nobody considers the Ukrainians and Russians living in the Donbas as a separate ethnicity or people; not they themselves, nor anyone else.
> after the coup in 2014
There was no coup. "Ukrainian MPs have voted to oust President Viktor Yanukovych and hold early presidential elections on 25 May." (BBC, 22 February 2014).
> the wording is open to interpretation, but not in the case of Ukraine. Nobody considers the Ukrainians and Russians living in the Donbas as a separate ethnicity or people; not they themselves, nor anyone else.
that is an unsubstantiated claim that's actually false and doesn't even preclude the right of any group of people in sufficient majority to exercise self-govern, by their mere will and manifestation, so i'm not going to even bother debunking it (again).
> There was no coup. "Ukrainian MPs have voted to oust President Viktor Yanukovych and hold early presidential elections on 25 May." (BBC, 22 February 2014).
that vote didn't reach the required 3/4 of the threshold required by the constitution for impeachment. the subterfuge employed to ignore that requirement was that yanukovich had allegedly relinquished his position, which actually means he had to flee the country for his life because of the threat of the nazi nationalists (armed by the us and on the loose around kiev), as did many of the 122 deputies that weren't even present in the voting. so you arm extremist groups for years, groom ngos to stirr up discontent funded by usaid and ned, then weaponize legitimate protests with violence, which then spirals out of control as the legitimate government overreacts in the crackdown, then you make huge international media fuzz about it, then you threaten the president to flee, then you hold a sham vote to impeach him, then you instate a "provisional" government you already decided. democracy installed! if all this sounds familiar it's because it is the good old cia coup playbook.
she had to actually publicly apologize (thus admitting the conversation) because eu vassals were indignant about her disrespect ("fuck the eu!"). fun fact: those insults are intolerable! but that the us secretary of state and the us ambassador were deciding, all by themselves, the composition of new goverrnment to replace the legitimate government of a foreign country ... that apparently bothered no one.
> that is an unsubstantiated claim that's actually false and doesn't even preclude the right of any group of people in sufficient majority to exercise self-govern, by their mere will and manifestation,
There was no majority, no will, no manifestation. Only Russian soldiers and operatives cosplaying as "separatists" to carve off a piece of another country. It's waste of everyone's time to pursue this contrived narrative and try to shoehorn it into something seemingly real.
> that vote didn't reach the required 3/4 of the threshold required by the constitution for impeachment.
They didn't vote for impeachment, but to hold early elections. Impeachment is an American thing. European democracies replace failed governments through negotiations between parliamentary factions, and if they fail to form a new government or prefer to request a fresh mandate from the electorate, hold elections ahead of the regular schedule.
> yanukovich had allegedly relinquished his position, which actually means he had to flee the country for his life because of the threat of the nazi nationalists
Yanukovych fled the country after 108 protesters were killed and he was about to get criminally charged for his role in it. His political base of support collapsed overnight, as is evident from the unanimous vote of Ukrainian parliament to hold early elections: not even a single member of his own party voted in favor of Yanukovych. His desperate last-minute attempts to negotiate some deal to save his ass fell through and he ran.
If you want to believe that Russia had no military forces in Ukraine before 2022, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Or do you think Russia is in the habit of randomly transporting air defense systems with Russian crew through different nation-states they have nothing to do with? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17#Fi...