Donbas war

For the Special Military Operation of 2022 Russia-Ukraine war

Pregnant strangled Russian woman, left. Victorious Ukrainians in the next room over, right.

The Donbas war began on Victory Day, May 9, 2014 when the U.S.-backed Maidan regime opened fire on civilians in Mariupol who were celebrating the 69th anniversary of the defeat of Nazism.

In July 2014 the fascist Maidan regime bombed its own citizens in Donetsk and Lugansk. The genocidal conflict to drive ethnic Russians out of the oil and gas rich Donbas received little, if any attention from Western media and political leaders for the next eight years.

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.

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.

Hromadske TV media is one of the most-watched networks in Ukraine. Hromadske is funded by the Dutch and US Embassies in Kyiv, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the European Endowment for Democracy, and Free Press Unlimited. Silicon Valley oligarch Pierre Omidary was also involved in creating the outlet. Hromadske hosted Bogdan Boutkevitch during the Maidan coup demanding genocide of ethnic Russians saying Donbas,

"is severely overpopulated with people nobody has any use for. Trust me I know what I am saying. If we take, for example, just Donetsk oblast, there are approximately 4 million inhabitants, at least 1.5 million of them are superfluous. We don't need to "understand" Donbass, we need to understand Ukrainian national interests. Donbass must be exploited as a resource, which it is. I don't claim to have a quick solution recipe, but the most important thing that must be done - no matter how cruel it may sound, there is a certain category of people that MUST BE EXTERMINATED.

The Donbass war is not what Americans think of as a 21st century war. It is a World War II type conflict, with two well-equipped, capable, real armies fighting each other for control of towns, villages, and fortifications.

Crimean Annexation

See also: Crimean Annexation

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.

Ethnic cleansing in the Donbas

See also: Ethnic cleansing in the Donbas and Aidar Battalion

Odessa Trade Unions House massacre

Burnt victims of the "Revolution of Dignity."

On April 16, 2014 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.

Murder, assassination and kidnapping

On March 25, 2019 Vasily Prozorov, a former employee of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) held a press conference. He reported that from April 2014 he rendered assistance to the special services of Russia. “From April 2014 I absolutely voluntarily, for ideological reasons, assisted the special services of the Russian Federation in obtaining information about the activities of Ukrainian law enforcement, in particular in the area of the ATO (Kiev’s military operation in the Donbass),” he stressed. According to Prozorov, he decided to do this after the events on “Maidan”.

Prozorov informed Russia about the whereabouts of Russian Life News journalists detained in May 2014 by Ukrainian military personnel. He described that back then he worked in the team of the Security Service of Ukraine in one of the villages near Slavyansk, where these journalists were detained. He immediately reported where they were, “because there were many who wanted to introduce your colleagues as military personnel and start their interrogations.”

In the area of conducting military operations in Donbass there are secret SBU prisons. One of them is located at the airport of Mariupol. The location is called “the library (библиотека), and its prisoners are called books”. According to Prozorov, it was possible to end up in such a prison for anything, including on suspicion of working for the Russian Federation, DPR, and LPR.

The Saur-Mogila monument was erected in 1963 to commemorate victory over the Nazis on the same spot in 1943. It was destroyed by Ukrainian Nazis in 2014 and rebuilt by the Donetsk Republic in 2022.

The leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics became victims of special operations, and not internal conflicts. “I am not omniscient, but concerning Motorola and Givi I am 100% sure that it was an operation of the special fifth department of the SBU and the special operations forces (SOF) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” he specified. According to Prozorov, employees of the Special Operations Forces are constantly trained under the guidance of instructors from the UK and other countries. Their specialties are acts of terrorism and the deployment of a partisan insurrection movement.

Fascist and Nazi views are widespread in Ukrainian law enforcement structures. Prozorov noted that this concerns not only voluntary battalions, where this phenomenon is rampant, but also about linear units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and National Guard.

The “Azov” formation is a non-controlled paramilitary formation that is subordinated only to its leader and the Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Prozorov recalled that in May 2017 another truce was concluded between the parties to the conflict. However, on May 9-10 the Azov artillery shelled the DPR and Mariupol. The former SBU officer noted that this is how the battalion carried out the orders of their superior, without informing the leadership of the ATO and the National Guard.

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

A truce was negotiated between the two separatist Republics and the Kyiv regime in late 2014 and early 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. The Minsk Agreements established a 12-point roadmap to ensure an immediate bilateral ceasefire; carry out decentralization of power, allowing temp orary 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.

Battle of Avdiivka

Starting Mid-April 2014 the Donetsk People's Militia captured several towns in the newly proclaimed independent republic; including Avdiivka. On July 21, 2014, Maidan regime forces reportedly secured the city from the militia. This claim was repeated the next day. Maidan rfegime forces kept control of Avdiivka, which became a frontline city and frequently shelled. According to the OSCE, the area between Avdiivka and neighboring Donetsk Republic-controlled Yasynuvata is one of the hotspots of the Donbas war.

In March 2016 the Maidan regime forces set up its fortifications in the area "Industrial Zone", until then a buffer zone between the Donetsk People's Republic controlled territories and the Kyiv regime army controlled territory in the eastern part of Avdiivka. This meant that the Donetsk People's Militia no longer had full control of the highway that united their controlled cities Donetsk and Horlivka and that it became more difficult for them to fire at Avdiivka with weapons not prohibited by the Minsk II agreement. Since March 2016 fighting for Avdiivka's "Industrial Zone" greatly intensified.

From January 29, 2017 until February 4, 2017 the city was embroiled in the Battle of Avdiivka which left Avdiivka without electricity and heating for several days.

Battle of Iloviask

Maidan regime forces made their first attempts to attack the city of Ilovaisk on August 7, 2014. Over the next few days, Maidan fascists made multiple attempts to enter the city, but were bogged down by heavy fighting with the citizens of Donbas defending their homes. Maidan forces attempted to enter Ilovaisk during the day on August 18, but failed. Led by the Maidan regime's Donbas Battalion, Kyiv forces launched another attempt to storm the city on the night of August 18-19. This attempt was successful, and they raised the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag over the city administration building without any casualties. Maidan regime media viewed this victory as an example of the strength and effectiveness of the Kyiv regime's so-called "Anti-Terrorist Operation" (ATO) against the anti-fascist forces.

US biological labs

Ukraine has no control over the military bio-laboratories on its own territory. According to the 2005 Agreement between the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government is prohibited from public disclosure of sensitive information about the US program and Ukraine is obliged to transfer to the US DoD dangerous pathogens for biological research. The Pentagon has been granted access to certain state secrets of Ukraine in connection with the projects under their agreement. The DoD Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has funded 11 bio-laboratories in Ukraine.

Russian military reported it had identified 30 sites where biological research with pathogens had been occurring under the direction of the Pentagon.

Among the set of bilateral agreements between the US and Ukraine is the establishment of the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU) – an international organization funded mainly by the US government which has been accorded diplomatic status. The US personnel in Ukraine work under diplomatic cover. The STCU officially supports projects of scientists previously involved in the Soviet biological weapons program. Over the past 20 years the STCU has invested over $285 million in funding and managing some 1,850 projects of scientists who previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction.

One such biological lab contractor is Metabiota, a company financed by Hunter Biden's Rosemont Seneca partnership with the state owned Bank of China. Metabiota was awarded a $18.4 million federal contract under the so-called "Defense Threat Reduction Program" in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and Ukraine. Metabiota receives the lion's share of funding as a U.S. defense contractor for bio labs in Ukraine.

Captured documents published by Russia claimed the labs were working on biological weapons such as anthrax and plague and that the Pentagon instructed the labs to destroy them in violation of Article 1 of the UN Biological Weapons Convention. Russia released captured U.S. documents indicating that among the work of the U.S.-funded biolabs was the testing of 400 and 4000 Ukrainian soldiers, respectively, for antibodies to Crimea-Congo fever and regional hantaviruses, and a search for anthrax spores in soil at livestock graves.

On March 7, 2022, the Russian military claimed to have identified 30 sites where pathogenic research under the direction of the U.S. Defense Department had been occurring on the territory of Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Defense stated, "The Ukrainian biological laboratories in Lvov were conducting work with infectious agents of plague, anthrax, and brucellosis, while the labs in Kharkov and Poltava were working with infectious agents of diphtheria, salmonellosis, and dysentery…The government in Kiev had sent to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the United States thousands of patients’ serum samples, primarily from patients of “Slavic ethnicity”, under the pretext of testing COVID-19 treatment methods”.

US-backed Nazi insurgency

Nazi propaganda from World War II depicting Russians as 'The Subhuman'. Azov Battalion Commander Andriy Biletsky said "Ukraine's mission is to lead the white races of the world in a final crusade against Semite-led Untermenschen."

Yahoo News reported on January 13, 2022:

"The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials. The program has involved ‘very specific training on skills that would enhance’ the Ukrainians’ ‘ability to push back against the Russians,’ said the former senior intelligence official. The training, which has included ‘tactical stuff,’ is ‘going to start looking pretty offensive if Russians invade Ukraine,’ said the former official. One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. ‘The United States is training an insurgency,’ said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how ‘to kill Russians.’”

Kherson had been the first city to fall in the incursion. The first commemoration of the city's liberation from Nazism in 1944 was held since the Maidan coup. The eternal flame to the victims of Nazism and the soldiers who died liberating the city was relit.

By early March, 2022 partisan activity was reported in Kherson. NATO trained Ukrainian partisan militias and military units to use civilian vehicles to infiltrate and strike behind Russian units with mortar attacks and call in targeted artillery strikes.

Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, vowed a guerrilla insurgency after the devasting defeat of Armed Forces of Ukraine on the battlefield.

The United States flooded Ukraine with billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry, with some of those arms ending up in the hands of actual neo-Nazi battalions integrated into the Ukrainian government and military. The New York Times admitted that “C.I.A. officers are helping to ensure that crates of weapons are delivered into the hands of vetted Ukrainian military units." By definition, the U.S. is waging a proxy war against Russia, using Ukrainians as their instrument, with the goal of not ending the war but prolonging it, making the United States a cobelligerent.

On March 8, 2022, the U.S. Congress approved a $14 billion aid package for Ukraine - nearly equal to 10% of Ukrainian GDP before its loss of territory and population - insuring and funding an insurgency long past the Ukrainian military's defeat in the field by Russian forces.

Special Military Operation

See also: 2022 Special Military Operation in Ukraine - Donbas cauldron

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.

In the run up to the wider war, both the United States and NATO rejected, without consideration, two formal diplomatic proposals by the Russian Federation for peace treaties between the Russian Federation, United States and NATO to avoid war. The treaty proposals would require NATO to pledge not granting Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia NATO membership; U.S. missiles in Poland and Romania to be removed; and NATO deployments to Eastern Europe reversed. The U.S. and NATO rejected the proposals out of hand in December 2021, and instead acted aggressively by sending more NATO forces to Eastern Europe and continued to heavily arm Ukraine.

NATO-backed neo-Nazi proxy forces attacked the Donbas again on February 14, 2022. Military forces of the Russian Federation (RF) entered Ukraine on February 24, 2022 to put an end to the ethnic violence and de-nazify the areas where the children and grandchildren of World War II Nazi collaborators had been carrying an ethnic hatred of Russians since the Holodomor of the 1930s and earlier. A wave of patriotism swept over Russian society, viewing the operation as a second Great Patriotic War. Soldiers felt they were sent to finish the job of de-nazifying Ukraine that their grandfathers left unfinished after World War II. The use of civilian human shields by the U.S-trained Armed Forces of Ukraine led to civilian casualties and was a primary strategy of the NATO proxies. Ukrainian security forces committed reprisal actions and atrocities against ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in areas which Russian forces vacated. Numerous attacks by Ukrainian forces on its own citizens, which had been ongoing in the Donbas region for the eight previous years, spread outside the Donbas to create false flag images of attacks by Russians. Efforts to rehabilitate the image and reputation of Nazis and Nazism by Western and Ukrainian media and psyops were non-stop since the beginning of the Russian incursion, with permanent and debilitating damage to the West's educational system and image throughout the civilized world. By early April 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine had been so degraded and decimated, or were out of fuel and unable to retreat, the Maidan regime doubled down on soft power, psychological operations and propaganda to garner sympathy from the West for continued support.

AFU troop concentrations on eastern Ukraine’s border on eve of the Russian SMO, February 24, 2022. According to the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Ukraine had massed 122,000 troops on the border with Donbas. The Duma furthermore has claimed to have intelligence indicating that these troops were planning an offensive into Donbas on March 7, 2022, which the Russian invasion preempted.

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. Previously, on October 19, 2022, The Jerusalem Post reported that Canada, the US, France, the UK and other Western countries helped train neo-Nazi extremists in Ukraine. Military analyst Boris Rozhin predicted an escalation of the conflict by the Kyiv regime and their NATO consultants with a full-scale provocation in Donbas. Using the 1995 model employed in Serbia called Operation Storm, 230,000-250,000 Serbs fled the territory of Serbian Krajina, and Croatian soldiers committed numerous war crimes against convoys of refugees and the remaining civilians, including the Dvor and Grubori massacres. The Ukrainian authorities intend to repeat the “Serbian scenario” in the territory of Donbas in order to expel citizens of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics from their homeland at gunpoint and take control of the region. More than 600,000 Russian citizens reside in Donbas.

In Donetsk region, between the evenings of 18 and 20 February 2022, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine recorded 2,158 ceasefire violations, including 1,100 explosions. In the previous reporting period, it recorded 591 ceasefire violations in the region. In Luhansk region, between the evenings of 18 and 20 February, the Mission recorded 1,073 ceasefire violations, including 926 explosions. In the previous reporting period, it recorded 975 ceasefire violations in the region.

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.

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

See also: Russia Ukraine conflict 2022‎‎

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 links

• In 2014, Donetsk Airport became a bloodbath as the Ukrainian army took over it, DIG DEEP DOCUMENTARY, Apr 21, 2022. youtube
• War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Ukrainian Military-Political Leadership in Donbass
• Donbass: 8 years of war" - Documentary by French journalist Anne Laure Bonnel (2016)
• Civil War in Ukraine 2014-2022
• ‘Scorching Sunlight’ (Burning Sun) with Englsih subtitles- Russian war drama released in 2021 tells the story about the conflict in the region of Donbass in 2014.
• Operation Liberation: In-depth look at the special operation in Ukraine | DIG DEEP DOCUMENTARY, Jun 5, 2022. youtube.com
• "At the forefront", Yulia Chicherina