DISINFO: Kyiv started the war in Donbas back in 2014
SUMMARY
The war in Donbas was started by Kyiv back in 2014, and Moscow, only eight years later, stood up for its compatriots who just wanted to speak their native language.
The civil war against the Russian population of Ukraine (where there were at least 10 million in Crimea and Donbas) had to be stopped, nipped in the bud. The West did not do this, but on the contrary, egged on and incited Kyiv.
RESPONSE
This is part of a disinformation campaign aiming to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, portraying the Ukrainian leadership as Russophobic and presenting the eight-year-long conflict in Eastern Ukraine as a civil war, perpetrated by Ukraine. This narrative tries to deny the role of Russian forces in the war in eastern Ukraine and creates a pretext for the invasion of the country.
The conflict in Donbas was not a civil war but a Russian aggression.
The war began in 2014 with the Russian illegal annexation of Crimea and Russia's military involvement and support of separatists in Donbas. The war in Ukraine is a well-documented act of aggression by Russian armed forces, ongoing since February 2014. There is irrefutable evidence of direct Russian military involvement in Ukraine.
The European Union stated in July 2014 that "arms and fighters continue flowing into Ukraine from the Russian Federation".
Russian special forces and troops operated to mobilise, lead, equip, and support separatist militias in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine from the spring of 2014, although Moscow denied their presence. On top of that, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted Russia's military presence in Ukraine in 2015.
There was no systemic hate speech against the Russian language, nor a plan to eliminate the Russian of Donbas, despite the Kremlin’s claims. The use of the term Russophobia is often, as showed Dr Timothy Snyder before the United Nations Security Council, a notion used to justify past or future crimes: "Russophobia, has been exploited during this war as a form of imperial propaganda in which the aggressor claims to be the victim. It has served this last year as a justification for Russian war crimes in Ukraine.”
The use of the Ukrainian language by the Ukrainian state or media is not a hatred policy against Russia, people are free to speak the language of their choice, on the contrary, forced Russification of occupied territories raises serious concerns.
See other similar cases in our database: Russians in Ukraine became the victims of fascism and genocide by Ukrainian Nazis; Russia protects the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine and fights against Ukrainian terrorists; Russia did not start the war in Ukraine, but it aims to end it; West has turned a blind eye to the genocide in Ukraine; West deceived Russia, then carried out a coup in Ukraine unleashing massacre in Donbas; Genocide committed by the Kyiv regime was impossible to stop by political means.