Donbas war

Pregnant strangled Russian woman, left. Victorious Ukrainians, right.

The Donbas war began in 2014 when the Obama administration-backed Maidan coup overthrew the democratically elected president of Ukraine. President Viktor Yanukovych's election had been certified by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He was the first democratically elected official overthrown in a violent revolution in recent memory. The U.S.-backed coup was accomplished with the aid of anti-Russian neo-Nazis in Ukraine. It was an unconstitutional regime change.

Crimea held a referendum and rejoined Russia rather than live under an illegal government. However, Russia did not accept the results of the Donetsk and Lugansk referendums in the Don River Basin, collectively known as Donbas. Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence from Kyiv and became known as the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. The Kyiv regime tried to retake the two separatist provinces.

A truce was negotiated between the two separatist Republics and the Kyiv regime in 2015 in the Belarusian capital of Minsk and known as the Minsk Agreements. The Agreements were negotiated with the help of France and Germany. Moscow backed the Minsk Agreements which Kyiv also agreed to, and the United Nations Security Council endorsed the agreements as well. The Minsk Agreements would give autonomy to the two provinces while remaining part of Ukraine. However the Ukraine regime did nothing to further implement the agreements after 2015, and only a ceasefire for the use of heavy weapons (tanks and artillery) remained in place.

As of 2021, 13,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

In early December 2021 it was reported that the Armed Forces of Ukraine deployed 125,000 troops, half of its forces, against the predominantly Russian speaking Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine. More than 600,000 Russian citizens reside in Donbas.

Odessa Trade Unions House massacre

Burnt victims of the "Revolution of Dignity."

On April 16, 3014 Forbes reported Obama CIA Dir. John Brennan's visited the new undemocratically elected Obama administration-backed regime in Kyiv. Two weeks later on May 2, 2014 Ukrainian nationalists murdered at least 42 Russians, most burnt alive in the Odessa Trades Union Building. Some eyewitnesses claim the real number is over a hundred. The bodies were removed and buried in secret. Survivors of the fire inside the building were executed with bullets to the head. Some were beaten to death with clubs when they jumped from windows of the burning building. A pregnant woman was strangled.

The Maidan fascists according to eyewitnesses outnumbered the anti-Kiev protesters 10 to 1. First the Maidan activists burnt down the tents of anti-Kiev regime protesters outside the building. The anti-Kiev protesters retreated into the building and tried to blockade the door. The Maidan protesters began throwing Molotov cocktails. Soon the building was engulfed in flames. The Maidan fascist crowd began cheering as they set the building ablaze and beat those who tried to escape. A Maidan activist was shooting at people trying to escape from the windows.

A group of Maidan girls filled up Molotov cocktails while the boys were busy using them to burn people alive. A fire station less than a kilometer away couldn't respond for hours. The Maidan activists blocked the lone fire truck and wouldn't let the firefighters operate.

Legality of Declarations of Independence

The unilateral declarations of independence by the Donbas republics are completely legal and precedented by the West's successful demands for Kosovo to be recognized as independent from Serbia, and adjudicated as such by the International Courts.

Minsk Agreements

The Minsk Agreements established a 12-point roadmap to ensure an immediate bilateral ceasefire; carry out decentralization of power, allowing temporary local self-government in areas of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine under a "special status" law; immediately free all hostages and illegally detained persons; ensure monitoring on the Ukrainian-Russian border and a security zone; ensure the holding of snap local elections in Donetsk and Luhansk; remove illegal armed groups, military hardware, and all fighters and mercenaries from Ukrainian territory; pass a law against the prosecution and punishment of people over certain events in Donetsk and Luhansk region.

The agreement was drawn-up by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, which consisted of representatives from Ukraine, Russia, and the OSCE. with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany. The agreement aimed to implement an immediate ceasefire. It failed to stop fighting in Donbas, and was followed with a new package of measures, called Minsk II, which was signed on February 12, 2015.

The Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) was established on September 26, 2014. to help implement the Minsk ceasefire agreements and ensure the safety of OSCE monitors in the Donbas war. It consists of Ukrainian and Russian military officers. In April 2015, Ukrainian and Russian representatives began to keep separate logs of ceasefire violations. The Russian members left Ukraine in December 2017.

A meeting between representatives of the four countries, France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine was held in Paris on January 26, 2022 in the context of the Russia Ukraine conflict 2022. The representatives of the four governments confirmed their support for Minsk II and committed themselves to resolving existing disagreements. They supported an unconditional ceasefire. However, the Biden regime, which was not a party to the talks, continued to prod Ukraine to war with Russia with promises of economic aid, arms, and by instigating conflict in the Donbas through extensive use of propaganda, psyops, and fake news in Western allied media.

2022 conflict

Propaganda war

In their drive to stoke hostilities between the West and Russia, corporate media ignored the fact that the U.S. and NATO forces have been supporting openly Neo-Nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine for many years. A MintPress study of the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal found that only one of 91 articles published in January 2022 mentioned this connection at all, with far more asserting that Vladimir Putin himself is Hitler incarnate. Around 90% of opinion columns pushed a “get tough on Russia” message, with anti-war voices few and far between. “People who take at face value the Western media coverage would have a very distorted perception of the Ukraine conflict and its origin,” Ivan Katchanovski, Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, told MintPress, adding:

Ukrainian flag with Nazi SS Wolfsangel insignia. Ukranian Nazis served in the Nazi SS Galacia Division to fight against Russia in World War II and are known for horrific atrocities against Russian, Polish, and Jewish civilians.

"They omit or deny that there is a civil war in Donbas even though the majority of scholars who [have] published or presented concerning this conflict in Western academic venues classify it as a civil war with Russian military intervention. The Western media also omitted that recent ‘unity marches’ in Kharkiv and Kyiv and a staged training of civilians, including a grandmother, were organized and led by the far right, in particular, the Neo-Nazi Azov [Battalion].”

Conducting a civilian training operation in the middle of the Donbas city of Mariupol while a crowd of Western journalists looked on, Azov units showed locals how to use rifles. The image of a silver-haired, 79-year-old “babushka” staring down the sights of an AK-47 went viral around the world, allowing the media to construct an “everyone in brave Ukraine is doing their part to oppose an imminent Russian invasion” narrative. The story was covered by a host of outlets, including ABC News, MSNBC, Newsweek, the BBC, The Guardian and The Financial Times, as well as by media in Ireland, Australia, Israel, Denmark, Thailand and Indonesia. Images from the training day featured on the front cover of six national British newspapers on February 14, 2022.

This was all despite the fact that the Wolfsangel insignia of the many Azov soldiers instructing the grandmother is clearly visible in a number of the images. The Wolfsangel was the crest of the infamous SS brigades, Hitler’s elite paramilitary units that carried out the extermination of millions of people (including countless Ukrainians) in Nazi death camps across Europe. The image is widely used by Neo-Nazi groups in the U.S. and is considered a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League. Azov’s original commander, politician Andriy Biletsky, has stated that he sees Ukraine’s mission as to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led subhumans.” None of the outlets above mentioned the fact that they were profiling Neo-Nazis.

Allegations of genocide

In early 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.

Evacuation of Russian citizens

As tensions escalated in mid-February 2022, some 700,000 women, children, and elderly were being evacuated to Rostov in neighboring Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the Russian government to house and feed people fleeing the Ukrainian military advance once they arrived in southern Russia. Each refugee arriving from Donbass is to be given a payment of 10,000 roubles ($129). RT reported Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk Peoples Republic warned, "Kiev can start a full-scale assault on Donbass at any moment, the situation is critical” A fullscale mobilization was ordered, and men 18 to 55 were conscripted to remain and defend against the Ukrainian military attack.

Cyberattack

On February 19, 2022 Luhansk internet providers came under cyberattack.

Ceasefire violations

On February 19, 2022 the JCCC reported: “A total of 49 ceasefire violations by the Ukrainian armed forces were registered on the territory of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic in the past day."

Peacekeepers

After repeated artillery sheeling of civilian residences by NATO-baked Ukrainian fascists, Russian peacekeeper forces were sent into the independent Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk on February 21, 2022.

Operation Denazification

On February 23, 2022 Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Greater Ukraine in a demilitarization and denazification operation.

In a televised speech shortly before 04:00 Moscow time on 24 February 2022, Putin announced that he had ordered Russian forces to enter eastern Ukraine. He insisted it was not Russia's intention to annex the country, but stated that Russia would protect the right of the self-declared breakaway republics to self-determination, and that it would do so by forcing the "demilitarisation" of the remainder of the Ukraine. Minutes later, explosions were reported at various points throughout the country, including the Ukrainian capital of Kiev as well as at Kharkov, Odessa, and several other cities. Ukrainian officials attributed these to cruise and ballistic missiles launched by Russian units at their military installations.

Russian ground troops were reported entering the Ukraine at around 06:48 local time near the city of Senkivka on the northern border, with others entering from the Crimea in the south shortly thereafter. Ukrainian government sources reported throughout the day that Russian units had launched attacks on numerous targets, including a landing of airborne soldiers at the Antonov International Airport outside Kiev, but added that their own forces were counterattacking and had inflicted heavy casualties on the Russians. A press conference by Ukrainian President Zelensky at 16:00 Kiev time revealed that heavy fighting was occurring in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, site of the 1986 nuclear accident, which lies along the direct route of advance towards Kiev from the north.

Reactions

Russia's actions in the Donbas region were condemned by a number of world leaders. In a speech to the House of Commons on 24 February, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Putin's claim of seeking the "demilitarisation and denazification" of the Ukraine an "absurd pretext" and accused him of attacking his "free and peaceful neighbor. "Putin will stand condemned," he said, "in the eyes of the world and of history." NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO troops would be deployed to Poland in the near future; at the same time, the EU warned of "massive" sanctions against Russian assets.

Pope Francis declared the next Ash Wednesday (2 March) to be an international day of fasting and prayer for peace, while Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, called Russian movement into the Ukraine "an act of great evil."

External link

• War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Ukrainian Military-Political Leadership in Donbass