Here’s the thing: In order to impose your will using military force, a lot of people, many of them innocent, have to get killed.
Avoiding this out of squeamishness, or modernity, or PC, gets lots of YOUR guys killed and ends without winning.
....”In order to ...’impose your will’... using military force, a lot of people, many of them innocent, have to get killed.”........
Key phrase of ‘imposing ones will’...at this juncture it appears Kiev began imposing it’s will on the East with brute force on a people who desired their statehood of sorts and run their own area of concern. Rather like our states here in the US.
This is why the Red-Cross declared this to be a civil war...which it is...with outside influences supporting parties, which is common in civil wars.