Which is largely due to their having a functioning economy. The areas in discussion under Russian influence simply don’t have much of an economy outside Russian assistance. To compare them to South Korea is pretty ridiculous.
The rest of your post pretty much backs up that the folks currently revolting in Ukraine don’t have much to bind them together. It’s a mess over there, and it most likely wouldn’t be a violent mess without the help of Putin and pals.
The areas in question are richer than the Ukrainian average. One of the two oblasts in question is the second or third richest in Ukraine after Kiev. This is the industrialized, more prosperous region of Ukraine, as distinct from the relatively backward agricultural west. To say they ‘don’t have a functioning economy’ is ridiculous, although it was certainly functioning better before the Galicians started shelling their factories.
As for what they have to bind them together, like I said, they’re united what they oppose. What they dislike is somewhat vague but it seems to include, in no particular order: free market capitalism, liberal democracy, secularism, and Western European hegemony (which sort of unites the other three). The monarchists and communists have in common that they dislike liberalism, and they think that their best bet at an antiliberal order is under Russian protection.
The Cold War ended in 1991. 1991 does not fall between 1979 and 1989. Russia only existed between 1979 and 1989 as a Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as part of the Soviet Union.
Given that the Maidan clowns were behaving much worse than dogs (dogs at least understand something about obedience, and loyalty) I’d say ‘shooting them like dogs’ was a lot better than they deserved. These jokers preferred to throw ‘protests’ and get their faces on TV than go back to work and obey their government. Yanukovych should have responded by slapping them around till they learned a lesson, and it’s unfortunate that he responded too little, too late. In the ‘good old days of the Soviet Union’, the Maidan protesters would have been shipped off to a labor camp. Then again, the collapse of the Yanukovych government offered an opportunity for Donetsk and Lugansk to break away for good, so I can’t say it was entirely a bad thing.
The connotation is that you do not respect the autonomy of Ukraine. You believe they are entirely owned by Russia, and not a country in their own right.
That does not seem to agree with what else you have said in this thread, where you have argued that specific regions should be able to become independent nations.
The other implication, of course, is that you want to be offensive to Ukrainians.
See, purely for rhetorical purposes it might be a bit better for your arguments if you at least pretended not to be a full-on Russian authoritarian. Though I personally do appreciate your refreshing honesty (I suspect many of your fellow-apologists are the same, but would rather disguise the fact), it tends to undermine your points.