the context of the war in ukraine is deeply embedded in the history of each nation. all of eastern europe suffered through first a domination by the mongols, and then probably out of that, it arose a whole cascade of imperial hegemonies over the subsequent centuries, such as the 500 years of the ottomans, and then the bulgarian, serbian, and austro-hungarian, leading up to the current time
specifically between russia and ukraine, ukraine has largely been agrarian society, because of their mostly flat land, they were very much a region of farmers mostly specialising in grain production
russia, historically, before the soviet union, was mostly just the region up to the boundary of siberia. siberia is just a wilderness, and aside from vladivostok and novosibirsk, it has largely been independent of russia.
the history between the two nations, came into play in the late stages of the tsarist russia period, Catherine was involved in taking control of the port of odessa, which opened up a market for russians connecting to turks and the middle east.
the modern situation arose out of a relatively recent provocation by the West to promote ukrainian nationalism, and this movement led to a persecution of ethnic russians in the eastern parts and crimea, and this was what led to the change in the politics that led to the russian aggression against this because it was very unpopular in russia, especially in the region around vostok, next door, which led to annexing of crimea, first, and then as this continued, the pressure on russians in eastern ukraine, after about 7 years of ethnic persecution, the military strategy people basically said "here is a problem that is going to potentially flow east and north from it to cause instability in the southern parts of russia.
as such, the whole thing really has been about the ingress of CIA/MI6 operations to exploit this instability to extend NATO jurisdiction to ukraine.
the ugly thing of all this is that eastern ukraine basically became a political and military football, and the west shot first, so to say, and from the perspective of the russian culture, having russians persecuted on their borders was extremely distressing, since southern russians families were being affected.
so, basically, ukraine invited the west to help them drive russians out of their eastern flank, in order to join the alliance, and so now, everything east of the dnieper is basically in a west/east german situation now, the same fascists on the west and communists on the east.
idk what to say as to what people living there are doing, i mean, idk only some part of the population can shrug the weight of this, and most of them fled already, so the people that are left behind, between dnieper and over to the east, are ukrainians, and on the other side of the line, are russians
this is war, and there is no space in the decision making, for kindness, and civility. it's over. until one side or the other side is tired of the disagreement, it will continue, and it will get uglier and uglier until the whole operation becomes politically untenable.
