Would you recognize a Ukrainian from a Russian if you saw them side by side? Or from any white European, for that matter?

Most likely, the Russian mercs set up the heavy gear - tanks, transports and such - while independent contractors officially working for Ukraine use the man-portable missiles and other small arms, and then either side drops an airstrike, just to make sure.

Now, there are a couple of weird pieces of the puzzle, such as the Chechens and the Azov idiots. I suspect they've been duped into a glow-op aiming to get rid of them in particular, since those are the kind of folks who can turn a perfectly good fake war into a real one.

And I think that's the overall bottom line here. In previous years, obsolete arms would be sold off to warlords in Africa and South America, Asia and the Middle East - where they did real damage, dooming millions of people to dictatorship, slavery, or worse. With a controlled conflict like this one, that can be avoided. And it's for the best - with Iran going nuclear, Brazil getting closer to superpower status, and China increasing its investments in Africa, these regions are no longer "safe" to ignore and treat as weapons dumps and drug farms, like in the Cold War. This engineered conflict, however crude and unconvincing it may be, is a suitable way to address the newly emerging status quo.