Thank you. We can either have a good faith discussion based on facts and evidence and what was actually said, or we can have this cable news-tier bullshit of putting words into mouths and bad faith mischaracterization. I'd prefer the former.
Now, your claim is that Russia started the civil war as a pretext to invade and that the separatists are just Russian proxies. On the other hand, the Russian narrative would claim the same thing about the Euromaidan coup. I treat both of those claims with roughly equal skepticism. I don't doubt that both movements have some degree of organic support, or that both have received foreign funding and support. I'll also note that, for example, the American revolution had support from the French, so I don't consider either movement accepting foreign support automatically disqualifying.
Regardless, the question is what the best scenario is going forward. I don't see either side as being particularly concerned with the well-being of the people living there, or in actual democratic representation or anything like that. As far as I can see, it's just about US/Ukrainian state interests vs Russian state interests, and I don't really have a dog in that fight. The interests of states are generally disconnected from those of the people.
In my opinion, if people really cared so much about the Ukrainian people, then we should've been providing them with foreign aid for domestic development, long before any of this started. And if that had happened, the people would be happy and comfortable and loyal to whoever provided it. Instead, conditions declined, people became resentful and felt that there was nothing to lose, and now we have this conflict and people are being forced into a meat grinder against their will. It would be a better use of funds to accept territorial concessions and divert the resources used for war towards rebuilding. Likewise, Russia could've used the funds they're using now to relocate the people loyal to them into Russia. This was is wasteful and destructive and benefits no one but the people in power on both sides.