Donbas war

The Donbas war began with the 2014 Obama administration-backed Maidan coup which overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Following the upheaval, Donetsk and Lugansk in the Don River Basin (or Donbas) of Eastern Europe declared their independence from Kyiv and became known as the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, collectively known as the Donbas.

Since 2014, the Russian speaking majority of the region has been at war with Kyiv government. The two sides negotiated a truce in 2015 in the Minsk II Agreements.

Allegations of genocide

In February 2022 Russia accused Ukraine's military of committing "crimes against residents of the eastern Donbas region" in a report filed with the United Nations. The Russian news outlet Sputnik reported that the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation after the discovery of mass graves of civilians in Donbass. "The remains of at least 295 civilians who died as a result of indiscriminate shelling by Ukrainian armed forces in 2014 were exhumed from them. It is already known that among the remains there are bodies of women of different ages," a statement from the committee said. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the events in Donbass a "genocide," saying that the Ukrainian government continues to violate human rights, including by legalizing the discrimination of the Russian-speaking population in the country. On January 16, 2022 Tass reported that Ukraine mandated all print media are to switch to the Ukrainian language.

See also

• Crisis in Ukraine