You used so many words to tell us that you're utterly ignorant of the subject you're opining on here. Let's take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here's the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:

here's how the election in 2004 went:

this is the 2010 election:

As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:

Ukraine is clearly not some homogeneous blob, but a large country with complex cultural and ethnic situations.

And of course, let's not forget how the regime the west installed in Ukraine has been abusing people of Donbas, there's even a whole French documentary on the subject

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=bN68OfFKaWs

and there's HRW statement on Ukraine using cluster munitions in Donbas as early as 2014 https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-cluster-munitions

Just a couple of examples of what was going on prior to 2022.