

The ones who did in Crimea by voting to join Russia weren’t recognized internationally. In general though, if you’re in the middle of Ukraine and your family has lived there for centuries, even when Western backed fascists take over the country and start shelling you in the civil war, would you easily make the decision to leave for Russia instead of staying, trying to survive however you can? I think if people legitimately were invested in preserving the Ukrainian state’s territorial integrity, the press gangs wouldn’t be abducting people with vans, and the militias for the LPR and DPR wouldn’t have been able to recruit much of anyone at all.
It is a proxy for an empire with even bigger bloodstains on its hands than Nazi Germany. The fact that NATO, and the US particularly, supports Ukraine to the point of making this war continue at all, rather than ending the same year it started, is evidence that the long term goals of empire are served by meeting Russia in the front. You might think it’s not fair to judge Ukraine for the actions or intentions of their supporters, but ultimately I’m concerned with the end of imperialism and capitalism; to “support” Ukraine (which in practice means supporting the military industrial complex) just means supporting my own oppression as a subject of American empire.