If you wish to know the opinions of the Donetsk people, I highly recommend Colonel Cassad.
A Russian ultra-natioanlist who thinks the UN is covering up 90% of the deaths in Ukraine because they were perpetrated by the Ukrainian goivernment?
You say that you distrust both sides but you'd eat a turd if it had a Russian flag in it.
I would very much appreciate it if you would stop insulting me, by the way. I respect both your opinion and your viewpoint and kindly ask you to do the same.
Aside from being a communist and a USSR-nostalgist, I think Cassad is rather unbiased in his reports of the war. He roots for the DNR, sure, but he doesn't shy away from telling all the unpleasant details about it, either, from the constant refusal to cooperate, backstabbing squabbling for power and resource hoarding between the various commanders that has led to, among everything else, Strelkov's removal, to the embarassing mistakes committed by certain commanders. Stupidity and lies from all sides are revealed and mocked, and if you ignore his, again, penchant for communism, you can see that he doesn't like Russian nationalists any more than the Ukrainian ones. I personally view him as a pro-Donetsk counterpart to the pro-Kiyv Simon Ostrovsky, with whom he should be read together for the clearest picture.
If you wish to know the opinions of the Donetsk people
I'll ask a refugee living nearby. Or chat with friends that are there and still have Internet. Or go to social media. Or thousands other sources.
but I think that blaming it for the current Ukrainian civil war
By tour logic every country invaded by Germany in WW2 had a civil war. They managed to find collaborators everywhere.
There are no civilian war in Ukraine, there are Russian-Ukrainian war with some citizens of Ukraine fighting on Russian side.
Tell me. If this is a civilian war, where is anti-government guerrilla outside of Russian controlled zone? Why we see a calm and peaceful life in Slavyansk that "rebelled" first?
I believe there's been plenty of smaller civil wars against the backdrop of the German invasion on the eastern front: the OUN-UPA vs. Poles and Soviets, Armia Krajowa vs Ukrainians and Soviets, many different partisan groups who didn't like each other very much vs. each other, the "forest brothers" in the Baltic states vs. Soviets, the nationalistic gangs of Caucasus vs. Soviets and each other and so on. Both the Soviets and the Germans, not being idiots, supported the aforementioned groups when they went against the Germans and the Soviets, respectively, and fought them otherwise.
As for the Donbass, there is little resistance to Ukraine outside of the actual rebelling territories because, in my opinion, the rebellion is defined not socially, i.e. people of certain class or ethnicity rebelling, but geographically, i.e. inhabitants of certain territories rebelling, in this case, Donetsk and Lugansk. Despite the pro- and anti-Russian attitudes of the sides implying an interethnic conflict, ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians are so closely related and so thoroughly intermingled in nowadays Ukraine, that it's almost impossible to differentiate between the two, and both the Ukrainian army and the rebels have people who identify as Russians and as Ukrainians in their ranks (as evident from many interviews), so that instead, the oposing sides identify as the pro-Russian people of Donetsk and Lugansk and their sympathisers and the pro-Ukrainian people of Ukraine proper and their sympathisers instead. There are diversionary groups acting in both the rebel's and Ukrainians' rear, yes, but otherwise, with this geographical division giving great incentive for individual pro-Russians and pro-Ukrainians to go to their respective side's turf as soon as possible for only there they could find like-minded individuals in any significant numbers, you'd be hard pressed to find a Donbass separatist supporter who isn't already in Donbass and a Ukrainian supporter who isn't already in Ukraine. It's a lot like American civil war, really - both camps of the same ethnicity, but defined by different political views and localised in two distinct areas, North and South.
But in this endless back and forth between us - which I hope you are not taking personally, because I still want to be friends with you and admire you as a person - we are discussing who is behind the current crisis, but if we ignore the politics and look at the people themselves, do you think that if the people of Euromaidan were morally justified in their rebellion against Yanukovich, aren't the people of Donetsk equally morally justified in their rebellion against Ukraine's transitional government and, later, Poroshenko?
If I took politics personally I'd be a sad man. And when I visit St. Petersburg sometime I'll make it a point of honor to buy you a beer 
In reply to the rest of your post: What UR said, basically. Why were there no peaceful mass protests like in Kiev? Why did they turn violent practically instantly instead of remaining peaceful for months like the Euromaidan (which took place during winter!)?
Also, please note that I was trying to refute your assertion that America instigated the coup. You... kinda dodged that.
Beer's on me, don't worry. We value our traditions of hospitality. Except Russian beer sucks so we should have some vodka with
shashliki instead.
My guess why the protests turned so radical so fast is because the people of Donbass felt afraid and alienated by the new government, since the Euromaidan did not only feature Ukrainian far-right nationalists, but was also primarily defined by opposition to Yanukovich, who supported and was supported by the Russophonic Ukrainians throughout his reign. Add to that the enforcement of Ukrainian language in schools and in official documentation and the scandal with the alleged prohibition of Russian language (I still have no idea what the hell happened, but the Donbassians
believed it was an attack on their identity), and it's possible to see why the long affiliated with Russia Donbassians would be afraid. We had a very good PM conversation with Avis-Mergulus back in the days of the old thread about this topic, I would actually like to quote some of that when I have the time.
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Topic: Russia Watch Thread/Ветка о России (Read 262222 times)