They ended up there because they fought and died against the fucking Nazis you historically illiterate ingrate. They migrated there after the Nazis had killed millions of Ukrainians, people who fought against the very Nazis and Banderite fascists that Ukriane now celebrates as ‘national heros’. ‘Imperialist soviet policy’, Ukriane was the breadbasket of the USSR, a technological powerhouse where the prime computer and cultural development of the USSR occured. An opportunity wasted by their corrupt political elite, a different elite than what is in charge now. Some fucking imperialism that is.

It literally is, oblasts have had long-standing right to teach their native languages, a right that was violated by the government almost immediately post Maidan, regardless of heritage or not. I would rather have had them be independent republics, but the likelihood of that is impossible under modern sovereign state politics.

You haven’t watched a single piece of documentary on the post-Maidan Donbass, or even Ukrainian history at all, you don’t know anything about what you are talking about.