I am talking about Kievan Rus when I am talking about the 'origin story'.
If we like it or not, national myths are and always have been an integral part to nationalism. So what different countries consider their origin myth does matter. Just as religion and language matter. And of course shared history.
> The reason the elites treated the border between Ukraine and the Russian Federation as meaningless was because ex-Soviet cronies were running Ukraine to plunder its assets.
This was literally my point. So you had the Soviet Union, witch was a country. And now different parts of that Union are fighting one another. Both countries were controlled by the former elites of the previous country.
The collapse of the Soviet Union literally was an Ukrainian/Russian independence movement based on the politics of the elites at the time. And the war now could be described as a independence war again.
My point here is that its simply isn't a strict defined what all these different things are. You can call it a civil war, and independence war or an imperial war. All of them are correct depending on how you look at it.
> The current conflict (2014 to now) is nothing like a civil war.
What we call things depends on how you look at it.
Consider the situation in Yemen for the past 35 years (the same amount of time as the Ukraine exists). You can call it a civil war, an independence war and many other things.
You seem to be attached to perfectly rigidly designed categories of what everything is. The real world just isn't that simple and fits nice into those categories. You seem to be against calling it a civil war between you interpreted what I sad as it being a 'Ukrainian Civil War' but you don't like that because the 'Ukrainian rebels' are outside supported and would normally not actually have a chance. Guess what, that is true in many civil wars.
But whatever, I wasn't even saying 'Ukrainian Civil War' anyway. I was just calling it a Civil War because of the extreme close historical connect, simply put for the last 400+ years what is now Ukraine and what is now Russia were one country. That to me is by far enough to consider it a civil war.
During the Soviet period, 'in theory' the different members were independent and just part of a voluntary union. But we know this wasn't the case because the communist elites really controlled both governments and the party was really in control of the whole thing. And while the Soviet Union went away formally, 'in theory' the two countries are now fully separated and independent, but in actual reality this was never really the case.
A civil war is not just a situation where you have a international recognized country as defined by the UN at the current moment, splitting into two groups fighting each other (with nobody from outside involved) until one wins and then are are reunified the same way.
> Oh and regarding England and Scotland, well, many Scots would like to leave the UK. That wouldn't be a civil war either, but an independence movement.
Speaking in actual realist terms England and Scotland don't actually exist, its one country called the UK who had a unified foreign policy for many 100s of years. If different parts of the UK fight each other for whatever reason, calling that a civil war is totally reasonable.
The Southern States were also an independence movement but yet somehow its called a Civil War. Independence movements often lead to civil wars. Literally a leading cause of Civil War. To say 'it wouldn't be Civil War but an Independence movement' makes no sense what so ever. Its would obviously be both.