https://nitter.net/codepink/status/1709591940675637312#m
https://www.codepink.org/arrested_11_activists_arrested_at_bernie_sanders_sit_in_for_peace
Solidarity to CodePink getting the message for diplomacy instead of endless money/arms heaping in the war as always. Can't habeeb Bernie went from resisting with his full body weight between two cops in his youth, to dolling out zip-ties like friendship bracelets. 
What 'political freedoms' did they gain? Specifically what freedoms did those of the Donbass gain? The right to no longer teach their native language? The right to be burned in their trade house? The right to be have artillery lobbed at their houses?
Belarus is not a 'puppet' state, it has more dictation around it's own policies than Ukraine does post-Maidan, and isn't actively selling all of it's assets to Russian corporations. Just because the Ukrainians you talk to are politically illiterate and filled with Western propoganda doesn't mean they are correct. Ukraine lost political freedom after Maidan because the game was specifically playing Russia off of the West for the benefit of the Ukrainian political elite. Post-Maidan it was still playing Russian interests off of Western interests, but now actively ignoring Russian redline policy and basic ethnic constitutional rights, a recipe for disaster and constant civil war. With the full-scale war now, it is totally capitulated towards Western demands, literally killing their own people in insane suicide drives, and selling off all fungible assets to the West.
Now, none of this was for the 'good of the Ukrainian people', either pre or post-Maidan, the game was always for the benefit of a small number of Ukrainians, but I don't see that changing anytime soon, and in fact, continuing to get worse, particularly as Ukriane continues to adopt privatization policies (policies first used to describe literal german Nazi policies) throughout their country. Liberal Ukrainians will not recognize the country they return to.
If we're already in illusionary politics land, here's my take on Donbass and Crimea. I don't care about their independence referendums. There's even a secessionist movement in Bavaria, demanding independence from Germany. Doesn't mean that any prick who thinks they deserve their own country should get one. How did the russians even end up there, if not by imperalist soviet policies which btw led to the deportation and death of millions who lived there before, e.g. Crimean Tatars. So Crimea belongs to the Tatars, right? Or no: Lets go back further. It belongs to the Greek who settled there before the Tatars! It's not like the Russians in Ukraine are some fucking indigenuous tribe whose customs and rituals deserve to be world heritage. While they should be treated with the same dignity as all citizens of Ukraine it's not like having a common language for teaching has anything to do with violating "ethnic constitutional rights".
In the end, the big majority of people in the Donbass would probably have preferred not to be occupied by unmarked troops sneaking into their homeland and afterwards being governed by idiotic strongmen who draft them for a war they never wanted.
And yet I guarantee you were full in on the Free Hong Kong bullshit a few years ago lmao, fuck outta here.
Enjoy paying through the nose for heat this winter, you propagandized fool.
They ended up there because they fought and died against the fucking Nazis you historically illiterate ingrate. They migrated there after the Nazis had killed millions of Ukrainians, people who fought against the very Nazis and Banderite fascists that Ukriane now celebrates as 'national heros'. 'Imperialist soviet policy', Ukriane was the breadbasket of the USSR, a technological powerhouse where the prime computer and cultural development of the USSR occured. An opportunity wasted by their corrupt political elite, a different elite than what is in charge now. Some fucking imperialism that is.
It literally is, oblasts have had long-standing right to teach their native languages, a right that was violated by the government almost immediately post Maidan, regardless of heritage or not. I would rather have had them be independent republics, but the likelihood of that is impossible under modern sovereign state politics.
You haven't watched a single piece of documentary on the post-Maidan Donbass, or even Ukrainian history at all, you don't know anything about what you are talking about.
It is exactly as Zhukov said, we liberate them and the shittiest among them will hate us for it.
What even is the point you're trying to make here? All independence movements are the same? That if there is a different independence movement that you don't support in completely different circumstances then that means not supporting autonomy for people in the Donbass is reasonable because you are able to draw a thin veneer of logical consistency through completely superficial comparisons?
If your national government gets undemocratically overthrown in a coup and then starts implementing policies to strip away rights in your region of the country based on removing your ability to participate in public life and suppressing access to political representation and economic/social participation with tactics such as making it unnecessarily difficult to participate in society using your native language, then that seems like fantastic justification to want independence and autonomy. Why would you need to draw comparisons to other secessionist movements based on little more than the superficial similarity that it is also a secessionist movement?
Oh, it's because your actual argument is that the people being affected are acceptable targets for racial/ethnic discrimination, and that they deserve to be relegated to their appropriate status as second class citizens without meaningful political representation, or better yet expelled from their homes so that the pure and righteous Ukrainian nationalists can reclaim their nation. But that's a less palatable argument, so you had to preface it with some bullshit before you slid that in there.