No one has a right to secede illegally in a representative democracy. You don't just go out and declare, with the full support of a invading force occupying another part of your country, independence.

I think Russia needs to butt out of this. No more incursions into Ukraine, no more propaganda about an impending genocide. So far what they have done looks alarming like Nazi Germany's playbook for the Rhineland. Claim that the ethnic Germans/Russians in a region of another country were under threat, support a separatist movement, then annex that land. And any time you start looking like Nazi Germany in a substantive way, it's time to start taking a long, hard look at your actions.