Originally Posted by
etudiant
No reason why he would, imho.
The Ukraine government chose to launch its army against its Russian speaking minority who were trying to retain their historic rights. This initial civil war stemmed from the Kiev government 's abrogation of these rights after the Maidan revolution. Germany tried hard to avert this war, with the Minsk accords. Their implementation was blocked by the Ukraine, not by the Russians.
If you would look a bit more closely to the videos where Ukraine Territorial defence forces proudly present scorched Russian armour you would probably notice that in most of the cases you could hear a Russian language. To think that Russian speaking Ukrainians are on Putin's side is the same nonsense like to think that English speaking Irish wanted London to rule their land in 1920. And if there was some pro Moscow sentiment it is finally gone after Putin made Russian speaking cities to dust.
Regarding Minsk accords the main obstacle was that Putin would never allow free elections in LNR and DNR under OSCE supervision. The leadership of self proclaimed republics were FSB/GRU/SVR "siloviki" sent by Kremlin backed up by little green men. Kyiv would be crazy to negotiate with this representation and that was the main reason why Minsk process halted.
When I speak to refugees in my country we talk in Russian and they deny that their language would be prosecuted in any way by Kyiv.
It is rather Russia which attempted to strip identity from Ukrainians for quite a while.