If this was true, there wouldn't be casulties suffered by russians in combat. There have been deaths, and there have been prisoners.
The absolute majority of claims of Russian casualties and prisoners after the Mariupol covert operation, where the Russians really did fight, that were made by Kyiv are just pure, unsubstantiated war propaganda baloney, just like both sides' claims of having taken the Donetsk airport have been so far.
...so.. all that Russian soldiers.. would need to do.. to become Russian supporting Ukranian rebels.. is to go to the combat area, and claim that they are not, in fact, russian soldiers? Forgive me for not accepting that definition, it's ridiculous. You could theoretically apply that to hundreds of thousands of men. You could use similar reasoning to defend an invasion of Hong Kong.
I am sorry, I didn't get what you were originally trying to ask, so I told you about how I distinguish between Russians and Ukrainians in general. Russian soldiers are servicemen in the Russian army, that's how I distinguish them.
Usually that is referred to as a pair of revolutions in the west... if you're going to call the entire process a coup, it becomes a meaningless definition as it was an enormously politically messy civil war. I would also question why Poroshenko wasn't in charge after the first time Yanukovitch was removed from power, if he was in fact behind this all.
The first time Yanukovich was ousted, it was Yushenko, the second time it happened, it was Proshenko, sorry for not making this clear. Also, coups are often not individual events, you can have a coup (Emperor replaced by the provisional government, in Russia's case) followed by a revolution and a civil war just fine.
I'm saying that even a weak leader would make a good figurehead, if the fighters were actually his supporters. If it was a coup by the people in Kiev, when he had many personal supporters in the rebel controlled parts of the country, his simple existance would be a strong, and cheap, tool to encourage resistance against the central government. Oddly, this is not the case..
The rebels did not particularly like Yanukovich, rather, they were defined by their dislike of Ukrainian nationalists, and supported Yanukovich when he was still in power only because of his opposition of said nationalists. When Yanukovich ran, the rebels quickly forgot about him.
If you believed that Russia was also lying through it's teeth, I would wonder why your statements fall so well in line with statements by those liars. Technically, that would remain a possibility, though. I do know quite a bit of stuff said by people over here is undeniably true, on the other hand. They didn't lie about sending air squadrons to Poland. There could certainly be stuff going on, but the claims as to what the Russians have been doing are very conservative.. they aren't claiming 40,000 man invasions or tank battalions. Mostly special forces, a few thousand regulars, and sufficient armor and supplies to support the action.
I never said that I actually believe most of what Russia officially says about Donbass, e.g., Putin says that he supports the rebels to protect the Donbass Russians against Ukrainian oppression, while in reality he just uses them as a political tool. And what you said about Russian support sounds rather reasonable, I'd agree with that.
That's a neat term, 'counter-seperatism measure'. One of those politic terms for thirty year campaigns of breaking down doors and shooting people. I will also say that in the west, power posturing isn't done by flying transponder-off aircraft in foreign airspace. And yes, we do have our own disputes.. we aren't all one nation, or in agreement over everything. Some of us aren't even American.
I'm also wondering how much of that money is spin-offs for his political supporters to wet their beaks in. There was quite a lot of speculation over the Soichi Olympics, for one.
Fool! Everybody knows that all the Europeans are just American special service agents in disguise!
Anyway,
aircraft everywhere seems to be a standard practice in times of power struggle for both Russia and NATO. As for the "counter-separatism measures", what I really meant in this case was just "keeping people happy." No, seriously, that's all there is to it. Some of that money does go to guys like Kadyrov, but the people get enough of it to turn Chechnya into the stable, prosperous region it is today. And the corruption in Sochi Olympics was
grossly exagerrated by the Western media, anyway.