But you support the victory of the mass-murdering empire that brought Ukraine mass graves in Bucha, Irpin, Izyum and other cities, flattened Mariupol and commits the war crimes of mass bombing of schools, maternity hospitals and children sheltering in clearly labeled theaters.

The Maidan was a real revolution, not a coup. The idea that the Ukrainians were passive CIA pawns is nothing more than neo-colonial prejudice. Watch the Winter on Fire Netflix documentary if you have any doubts. When Ukrainian civil society in November 2013 revolted against Yanukovych's puppet pivot to Putin's Eurasian Union, despite the parliament voting 85% for an EU association agreement, the Ukrainians knew where their prosperous democratic future lay--not with Putin's mafia with a flag kleptocracy. One look inside Yanukovych's kleptocracy-built villa tells you why.

Igor Girkin tells you who really started the Donbass war:

"Russian national Igor Strelkov, a former commander of pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine, has claimed personal responsibility for unleashing the conflict in which 4,300 people have been killed since April.

"I was the one who pulled the trigger of this war," Strelkov said in an interview published Thursday with Russia's Zavtra newspaper, which espouses imperialist views.

"If our unit hadn't crossed the border, everything would have fizzled out — like in [the Ukrainian city of] Kharkiv, like in Odessa," Strelkov, who uses that nom-de-guerre meaning "Shooter" to replace his last name Girkin, was quoted as saying.

"There would have been several dozen killed, burned, detained. And that would have been the end of it. But the flywheel of the war, which is continuing to this day, was spun by our unit. We mixed up all the cards on the table," he said. (Moscow Times, November 2014)

From the War in Donbass Wikipedia page we see that the average number of civilians killed in the six years before Russia's invasion is 61/year:

Casualties and losses

3,404 civilians killed (365 in 2016–2021)[29]

14,200–14,400 killed; 51,000–54,000 wounded overall[29]

1.6 million Ukrainians internally displaced; over 1 million fled abroad as of March 2016[32]

* Includes 400–500 Russian servicemen (per the United States Department of State, March 2015)[33]

Russia killed more in a single bombing of the children-sheltering Mariupol theater.