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These regions have unilaterally declared their independence since the 2014 revolution/coup.

In that sense the only thing that is new is the official Russian recognition.

It's a messy situation. According to the census on wiki only 1/3 are of Russian ethnic background. Does that mean only 1/3 supported the breakaway from Ukraine?

You can't help but to make comparisons to the Sudeten Germans and the like. "Peacekeeping missions".

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Those regions didn't declare anything in 2014. Just like Crimea. They were taken.

Literally the whole world knows that.

Source?

history tends to repeat itself. When Moldavian nationalists tried in 1990-1992 to clean the west bank of Dnestr (future Transnistria ) from Russians and Ukrainians, the Russian and Ukrainian volunteers were fighting there together. The Ukrainian forces were mostly from Ukrainian nationalist organizations OUN-UPA. These organizations were core to the Ukrainian volunteer battalions which tried to pacify the Donbass in 2014, and naturally a lot of Russian volunteers opposed them (some people who fought each other in 2014 were even fighting together back in 1992).

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