More like atrocious Western PR. I'm from one of the pro-Russia countries and the perception here is that essentially the West is evil therefore causing trouble for the West is good. Ukraine itself doesn't actually factor at all into the calculation. Multiple issues with cultural cache here (chiefly Palestine) have the West on the wrong side of history and you can probably see why that'd make people automatically sceptical when Western countries champion a cause for "human rights." Anything coming from Western media is also going to be viewed with scepticism because of their awful track record on Palestine in particular. All of this means that unless someone actually cares about the war and tries to learn more about its background they'll be making a judgement off "West bad" and nothing else. It's not even that Russian media has better penetration (I don't think it does); people just assume the Russia is in the right because they have a history of opposing Western interests. Which, I mean, if you told me five years ago that there would be a situation where the West was undisputably the good side I'd have probably laughed at you; I think Westerners don't appreciate just how absurd this is in the context of the past two centuries of Western foreign policy.

TL;DR: Ukraine is being punished by association for two centuries of Western imperialism.

They have a skewed vision of reality due to government censorship

Fascists

It's all rainbows and sunshine when it's not happening to you. You can have all the stupid opinions you want. But when something bad happens to you, that's when the crying starts.

I've been under the impression that China and the US wants the precedent so they can do the same themselves

I'm putting this behind a spoiler, because it seems like a good faith question but I also expect many people don't want to see an answer.

:::spoiler click here

From the pro-Russia perspective (though I consider myself neutral), the separatists had the right to secede, the DPR was a legitimate state, and Ukraine sending troops to suppress them was "forcing itself into their sovereign land." If the DPR was a legitimate state, that would mean that Russia was simply responding to their request for military aid.

So, everything depends on the question of whether the DPR, and whether Ukraine, were/are legitimate states.

From the pro-Ukraine perspective, the separatists were always just Russian proxies, armed men who seized government buildings and held an illegal and rigged vote, while the Ukranian government is a democracy representing what the people really want.

However, the pro-Russia side would counter that the Euromaidan uprising was controlled by American proxies, and involved armed men seizing government buildings and then holding an illegitimate vote to oust the president. Then, they proceeded to ban the opposition parties popular in eastern Ukraine, denying them a chance to voice their positions, or to persue secession through peaceful, legal means.

So, the question of who is legitimate depends on which armed men seizing government buildings you read as foreign proxies vs representing genuine popular will.

The reason why I consider myself neutral is simply that I treat both groups of armed men seizing government buildings with equal skepticism. Perhaps they're both fully proxies and it's just a proxy war, or perhaps they both legitimate, and the people in the disputed regions genuinely wanted to secede. But I'm not willing to treat one group of armed men seizing government buildings as legitimate and the other as proxies, without good reason, because I consider that biased.

But there does seem to be at least some genuine support for secession in the east and if that's the case I fail to see why they shouldn't be allowed to leave. If there wasn't, then Ukraine wouldn't have banned opposition parties. If Ukraine wants them in their country then they shouldn't have restricted their voice in government.