Your first paragraph, yeah, but... "Every dollar spent on buying drones for Ukraine to blow up Russian tanks with buys that many more minutes on that clock.", really? How would that help us, everyone else? It has been so long yet no one knows fuck all about the Minsk agreement and how it all started. Funny that. I wonder if Wikipedia is still accurate on that one... but I get it, Russia is bad.
Like I said, that helps us by giving our politicians more time to figure out that they need to do the right thing for our own long-term safety, if nothing else.
As far as knowing what it's all about - I am a Russian citizen, I was born in Russia and lived most of my life there; I know full well what it's about, thank you very much. I've read military fiction about invading Ukraine (where Russians were, of course, the good guys) as far back as 2008 ("Эпоха мертворожденных), and I've heard others joking and sharing wishful thoughts about the same back in 1990s. If anything, what Western audiences often don't understand is that this isn't some kind of new thinking that first emerged in 2014, or even in 2004 during the Orange Revolution. The notion of restoring the historical "greater Russia", which unambiguously includes most of Ukraine, has been a staple of Russian imperial politics since the dissolution of the USSR - and open unabashed imperialism is very popular in Russia.
(That word "imperial", by the way, is not some kind of political slur, either - "имперец" is what the adherents literally call themselves, because they are proud of it. So, yeah, Russia is the textbook imperialist invader. And imperialism is bad, without a doubt.)
Now, that all doesn't mean that Ukraine cannot and doesn't do bad things of its own. But that is not why it got invaded, so it's all irrelevant.
And it's even more irrelevant in the original context of my post. Regardless of the why, the point is this: Ukraine surrendered its nukes in exchange for security guarantees wrt its sovereignty and territorial integrity. This was hailed as as an exemplar act and a major milestone for nuclear non-proliferation. Then Ukraine got invaded - by one of the countries that provided those guarantees, no less! - and meanwhile other countries who signed that agreement and convinced Ukraine to sign it are unwilling to actually intervene to the degree necessary to secure its territorial integrity, effectively reneging on their promise. Now, Ukraine is at the risk of being completely overrun and fully occupied. And on the other hand, we have North Korea, which developed its own nukes from scratch, and, despite constant state of confrontation with US, has never been invaded or even bombed since. For any other small country watching all this from the sidelines, what is the obvious takeaway? Why, it's that international security guarantees aren't worth shit, and that a larger country can always steamroll over your conventional military, but nukes are an effective deterrent.
The Minsk agreements began as an effort to address the conflict between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, though. Do we have a disagreement here? I crystal clearly remember when pro-Russian Ukrainians were fighting against their own Ukrainian government.
As for the rest: the failure to uphold the commitments made in the Budapest Memorandum contributed to the deterioration of relations between Ukraine and Russia, leading to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The Minsk agreements were then pursued as a diplomatic effort to address and resolve the resulting crisis.
Regardless of any of that, it was between pro-Russians in eastern Ukraine vs. the Ukrainian government. The conflict in eastern Ukraine involved clashes between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups. These groups, often referred to as "separatists" or "rebels" declared independence in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and established self-proclaimed republics. Amidst the conflict, efforts were made to negotiate ceasefires and peace agreements. The Minsk agreements, as mentioned earlier, were one such attempt to bring about a cessation of hostilities and a political resolution to the conflict. However, the ceasefire has been repeatedly violated, and the conflict remains unresolved. Might I add that the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine has been repeatedly violated by both Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups. Both sides have been accused of violating the terms of the ceasefire agreements outlined in the Minsk accords. You can read more about it.
For the record, Donbass is often used as a term to refer to the eastern regions of Ukraine, particularly Donetsk and Luhansk, where the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups has been ongoing since 2014. Those regions are where pro-Russian sentiment is significant.
If you look at prominent "pro-Russian separatist" commanders in Eastern Ukraine back in 2014, the vast majority of them were Russians who came there from the outside, not locals. Igor "Strelkov" Girkin being the most prominent example, and particularly relevant since he, by his own admission, was the one who shifted gears from civil unrest to outright war by occupying Slavyansk and Kramatorsk with his unit.
There were no separatists in eastern Ukraine. The European Court of Human Rights has determined that the so-called separatists were either unmarked members of Russian armed forces and special services, or under their direct command. It was one big ruse and as you demonstrate, even ten years later, when all the facts are known, people are still believing a lie that was manufactured in 2014 as a cover story for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Court held, on the basis of the vast body of evidence before it, that Russia had effective control over all areas in the hands of separatists from 11 May 2014 on account of its military presence in eastern Ukraine and the decisive degree of influence it enjoyed over these areas as a result of its military, political and economic support to the “DPR” and the “LPR”. In particular, the Court found it established beyond any reasonable doubt that there had been Russian military personnel present in an active capacity in Donbass from April 2014 and that there had been a large-scale deployment of Russian troops from, at the very latest, August 2014. It further found that the respondent State had a significant influence on the separatists’ military strategy. Several prominent separatists in command positions were senior members of the Russian military acting under Russian instructions, including the person who had had formal overall command of the armed forces of the “DPR” and the “LPR”. Further, Russia had provided weapons and other military equipment to separatists on a significant scale (including the Buk-missile used to shoot down flight MH17). Russia had carried out artillery attacks upon requests from the separatists and provided other military support. There was also clear evidence of political support, including at international level, being provided to the “DPR” and the “LPR” and the Russian Federation had played a significant role in their financing enabling their economic survival.
By the time of the 11 May 2014 “referendums”, the separatist operation as a whole had been managed and coordinated by the Russian Federation. The threshold for establishing Russian jurisdiction in respect of allegations concerning events which took place within these areas after 11 May 2014 had therefore been passed. That finding meant that the acts and omissions of the separatists were automatically attributable to the Russian Federation. /---/ In the absence of any evidence demonstrating that the dependence of the entities on Russia had decreased since 2014, the jurisdiction of the respondent State continued as at the date of the hearing on 26 January 2022.
