I said it before - I believe in national self-determination as an overriding principle in politics. I thinl multinational states are inherently unjust. They are either doomed to fail, or bound to spend untold amounts of resources to become mononational, causing massive collective pain in the process in both cases.

Meaning, I support the right of the ethnic Russian regions in Ukraine to break away. Ideally to stay put and form new independent states, because I also think geographically and demographically large states are a failure too, but I would be ok with a voluntary unification with Russia.

So as far as that goes, Ukraine was unjustified in impeding their self-determination.

The issue though is that Putin's invasion has nothing to do with any of that. It's simply a negation in turn of the Ukrainian people's right to self-determination and to freely define the future of their polity, without a terrorist regime blackmailing them constantly.

For me, a just diplomatic solution would be Ukraine giving up those territories and Putin giving up his aspirations to be de facto dictator in Ukraine. That means if Ukrainians decide to join NATO and the EU, they do. It is unfair that Ukraine has to be the one taking the first step, but that's part of the realism of life.

As a matter of fact, being an illegitimate tyrant, Putin doesn't even have the right to complain or be unhappy about anything Ukraine does, the way a more just government would do or individual Russians do.