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The Ukraine issue is pretty straightforward. The country explicitly denied the right to self determination (secession) in its constitution because it knew regions with ethnic Russian majorities (like in Crimea and Sevastopol) would vote to join Russia, while regions like Donbas which have significant Russian populations would be at risk of seceding. Sevastopol and Crimea did vote to join Russia (as did half of the local military forces) and Donbas has been in a low grade civil war for almost a decade now.
In that civil war, the most liberal estimation of Russian soldiers involved has been 12,000 (the US deployed at least 112,000 at the peak of the Iraq War for comparison and had 5,200 stationed until last year along with 20,000 marines in embassies and thousands of PMCs). Keep in mind though, that when hawks fret about Russian “aggression” towards Ukraine, they mean Russian soldiers moving within Russian borders on the edge of an active war zone in Ukraine (since they struggle to produce any actual documentation of Russian soldiers in Donbas). Is it aggression when Russia stations soldiers within its own borders? Is it aggression when the Russian military acts as a buffer against an ongoing civil war? No of course it isn’t and it’s chauvinism to suggest that Russians do not have that right because it upsets the liberal hawks (not to even mention the crimes of their own country).
Which countries allow the right to secession? I mean, it would be great if all nation-states gave that right to the territories they govern, but in practice how common is it?
Ukraine actually does, on the condition that the rest of Ukraine agrees to it as well. While I’m not aware of the right being explicit anywhere, the right to self determination (meaning secession) for peoples in Europe and Asia has been a liberal (and left) position for over a century, and it should be easy to demonstrate hypocrisy and opportunism when say, Taiwan should be allowed to secede but not Crimea. If op’s “bro” is so nakedly reactionary that they don’t care then op should simply use that metric to end the discussion.
