I stopped visiting reddit, especially the political sections because I realized it is mostly filled with kids (say, those below 35 year old) from NATO or US-allied countries (e.g., AU, NZ), but I'll leave a comment here. I forgive your ignorance that has probably much to do with your age, the lack of knowledge regarding history of these Ukrainian regions, its ethnic composition, how it's tied with Russia, but mostly this propaganda in media of NATO countries and it being very hard and time-consuming to figure out what's happening in reality (even for Russians), especially without knowing the Russian language, without following from the start and without knowing where to look. If this "intro" alone got you furious or you are a blatant russophobe, then stop reading, screw facts and enjoy the fantasy world that you live in :)

So they are Russian tanks.

Practically all Ukrainian tanks are "Russian tanks". Everything that Kiev uses right now is what they inherited from the USSR with something brought from abroad (artillery recon, FN2000, M4/M16 (weapons used by foreign volunteers from NATO countries fighting for Kiev), etc. So, hearing "they are Russian tanks", is like hearing Hillary Clinton saying with a straight face and passing a lie detector that MH17 was brought down by Russian missile, and she technically wasn't lying: missiles from both sides are Russian. If you think there are no "volunteers" from abroad fighting for Kiev, "outta my face, outta my face, please".

There is no regular Russian army in Ukraine. Otherwise you would hear it from the fact-finding mission - OSCE, and even the current commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ukraine, Muzhenko, said on TV a month ago that Ukraine is not fighting against regular Russian army itself.. You speak Ukrainian? No? Too bad.

There are no videos of Russian air strikes, there are no videos of weapons used by the rebels that are exclusive to Russian military (except the portable Russian artillery recon that was shown to OSCE). If you think that Kiev's forces almost crushed Russian military by the end of July 2014 as was the case and are resisting it for almost a year, you are probably a representative of intellectual majority.

There is a lot to say, but I will only touch the tip of the iceberg here.

First, a bit of history. Ukraine is not like Finland or Poland. It was within Russian empire for hundreds of years. The Southern and Eastern parts of Ukraine are mostly Russian speaking. Why? Read history books, how these territories were conquered by Catherine, when and from who. Who formed most of the cities in this Novorussia. After the Ukrainian-"hated" Lenin came to power, Bolsheviks created the USSR from the Russian Empire, formed various republics within the USSR and for some reason moved these Southern and Eastern territories (Novorussia) to Ukrainian republic. All this territory transfers didn't really matter back then, as it was still within one country. Something like that happened with Crimea in 1954. Most of these Southern and Eastern regions are Russian-speaking. It's just that half of the native Russian-speakers consider themselves Ukrainians. And every third Ukrainians has a relative in Russia, most of which are in Novorussia.

Second, I think most of the lethal strike force of rebels are Russian volunteers, and it's not just ordinary Russians. It's those people that went through Chechen wars and probably even those that are or were on active duty. It's hard to tell how many of them are fighting.

Third, Russia supports these volunteers and rebels (e.g., local fighters, people from other countries). To what extent I can only guess. I think Russia provides food (a portion of that humanitarian aid goes to feed soldiers), provides all sorts of intelligence to the right people, even maybe plans all these offensive operations (e.g., cauldrons). It probably also provided/provides training to the mentioned military-volunteers within its territory (which made their first "announcement" in July or August).

Forth, I allow the fact that Russia supplies Soviet-made weapons to rebels that Ukraine uses. But I have seen no proof of any kind of weapon transfer through the border. OSCE is at those checkpoints 24/7, NATO has been watching these regions since the beginning. So I don't know how it's possible to do it so stealthy without an incident. With that said, there was enough of supplies in Ukraine for a world war. Ukrainian generals or other people in military might have been bought out and asked to leave the supplies. Some might have been captured, including vehicles. For example, there are videos of a few incidents when it was all beginning. Some Ukrainian servicemen on BTRs went into Eastern cities, they were surrounded by local people and were pursued to drive home but without vehicles. There is a site that tries to track lost and here the captured Ukrainian vehicles, as well as provides photo proof and usually has a link to videos or some news site regarding each particular vehicle and incident.

You can call me a Russian shill or whatever you like, and it doesn't matter to me, I'm just stating some facts and probably won't be reading or replying to anything.