> The legitimate government of Ukraine was toppled in a coup in 2014. And there was another legitimate government formed immediately afterwards, based on the r

> The legitimate government of Ukraine was toppled in a coup in 2014. And there was another legitimate government formed immediately afterwards, based on the results of the subsequent 2014 election, and then again in 2019. Or were those governments not legitimate, because Russia stopped people in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk from taking part in the election process? Hopefully you can see why that is a very self-serving definition of "legitimate". > is more like a civil war or intervention in a civil war Without wanting to introduce any whataboutist tangents, I will agree that foreign nations picking a side in a civil war is a very ethically and legally dubious form of military policy, but Russia hasn't said it wants the side it's backing to invade Kyiv and reinstate the "legitimate" government. This is more like the American South deciding to secede over "states' rights" and Russia giving military support to the Confederacy. > It is unclear why nationalism in Western Ukraine is portrayed as legitimate but nationalism in Eastern Ukraine is not. Ukraine is an independent sovereign nation, and even Putin used to accept that fact. What you call "nationalism in Western Ukraine" is just a sovereign nation wishing to maintain its sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is almost the defining characteristic of what a sovereign nation is. By contrast, the separatists in the eastern part of Ukraine are not, and have never been sovereign, so their "nationalism" is only legitimate up to the internationally accepted right of "self-determination", which specifically does not include independent sovereignty, and certainly doesn't include a right to wage a civil war against the sovereign government whose territory they want to claim.