That's pretty much the whole country. Most Ukrainians speak Russian as their first language. The Ukrainian language in Ukraine is like Gaelic in Ireland.
Should Putin have allowed Russian ethnics be slaughtered? 8,000 Russian ethnics were killed by Ukranians, probably under order from Zelensky.
Except that it first emerged as a language about 170 years ago.
You should edit Wikipedia to fix either how many Irish people live using Ghallic, or how many Ukrainians live using Russian.
I decided to try to find some more detailed deaths in Donbas figures, 2014 to 2021 and found this very comprehensive link covering that region and time period. It also has 660 References. More tidbits from there below the link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas_(2014%E2%80%932022)#External_links
“Yanukovych administration and the Party of Regions signed cooperation agreements with Vladimir Putin’s Unified Russia party, the Chinese Communist Party and the Socialist group in the European Parliament”[55] [It appears when people voted for Zelenskyy they were moving away from Communist and Socialist associations. ]
Analysts have stated that as of February 2014, Russia was able to:[56]
* Control gas shipments to Ukraine, (in the past few years, it has twice turned off the flow of gas to the country to force the hands of Ukrainian leaders);
* Manipulate the price of gas to Ukraine’s fiscal disadvantage;
* Arbitrarily impose trade restrictions on Ukrainian exports;
Flood Ukraine with television propaganda highlighting alleged Western interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs and the threat of fascism;
* Infiltrate Ukrainian security forces to stage provocations that would discredit the opposition (there have been persistent but unsubstantiated reports of Russian special forces being involved in kidnappings, beatings, and even sniping against the Ukrainian opposition);
* Stir up secessionist sentiment in ethnic Russian areas such as Crimea and Donetsk.
And that by all signs, the Kremlin also maintained a tight hold on Yanukovych.[57]” [From these Russian activities, it would appear Ukraine as a whole had good reason to be against the Yanukovych administration.]
“While the initial protests were largely native expressions of discontent with the new Ukrainian government, Russia took advantage of them to launch a coordinated political and military campaign against Ukraine.[59] Russian citizens led the separatist movement in Donetsk from April until August 2014, and were supported by volunteers and materiel from Russia.[60][61][62] As the conflict escalated in May 2014, Russia employed a “hybrid approach”, deploying a combination of disinformation, irregular fighters, regular Russian troops, and conventional military support to destabilize the Donbas.[63][64][65]” [Note Russia entered Crimea for conquest in March 2014. These events ended exploration agreements for gas and oil Ukraine had signed in 2012 with US oil companies for search around Crimea and in east Ukraine.]
NOW for some CASUALTY FIGURES
The estimated number of fatalities in the Donbas war was 14,200–14,400 by the end of December 2021, including non-combat military deaths. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 6,500 were pro-Russian separatist forces, 4,400 were Ukrainian forces, and 3,404 were civilians.[15] The vast majority of deaths were in the first two years of the war (2014 and 2015).
CIVILIANS
* According to the United Nations, 3,404 civilians were killed in the war and more than 7,000 were injured. The vast majority of civilian deaths were in the first two years of the war, while 365 civilians were killed in the six years from 2016 to 2021. In the year before Russia’s full-scale invasion, 25 civilians were killed, over half of them from mines and unexploded ordnance.[15]
* Of the civilian deaths, at least 312 were foreigners: 298 passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17,[15] 11 Russian journalists,[590] an Italian journalist,[591] a Lithuanian diplomat,[592] and one Russian civilian killed in cross-border shelling.[593]
* Of the 3,106 conflict-related civilian deaths, not counting the fatalities from the shoot down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17: 1,852 were men, 1,072 women, 102 boys, 50 girls and 30 adults whose sex is unknown.[15]
UKRANIAN FORCES
* Ukraine reported that 4,647 of its servicemen had been killed by late February 2022, including 262 foreign-born Ukrainian citizens or foreigners.[11][12][13][c] Another 70 Ukrainian soldiers were missing.[14]
* Pro-Russian sources claimed Ukrainian forces had 10,000 killed, 20,000 wounded and 13,500 deserted or missing, by late June 2015.[594]
SEPARATIST FORCES
* The separatists reported that they had lost 1,400 men at most by February 2015.[595] The UN reported 6,500 separatists were killed by the end of December 2021.[15]
* Ukraine claimed 7,577[596][597] separatists had been killed and 12,000 were missing[598] by early 2015. They claimed an additional 103 Russian servicemen were killed between January and April 2016.[599]
* An image of a reported separatist graveyard in Donetsk in late February 2015,[600] showed numbers running up to at least 2,213.[601] In late August 2015, according to a reported leak by a Russian news site, Business Life (Delovaya Zhizn), 2,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in Ukraine by February 2015.[602][603] The US Department of State reported that 400–500 Russian soldiers had been killed by March 2015.[604]
* Between January 2017 and late February 2022, DPR separatist authorities reported that a total of 677 separatist fighters had been killed in DPR-controlled territory.[605]
[The above link details the Minsk I and II peace efforts, and much else. I have seen an interesting chart with deaths arranged by years. Tomorrow I may find it. Good night all.]