Donbass Ukraine war Donetsk Luhansk Novorussia

Destroyed Ukraine military vehicle with dead Ukraine soldiers on the outskirts of Debalstseva, 2014.

Russian federation on 24 February launched a "special performance" in Donbass aimed at protecting Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR), which were recognised as independent entities by Moscow on 21 February. The Western media called the operation "an invasion" they have long warned about.

The "Russia invasion" narrative wasn't the West's "prophecy" but rather a cover-upwards for a new attempt to return the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk republics past force to Ukraine, according to George Eliason, an American investigative journalist who lives and works in Donbass. Bringing dorsum Donbass would have paved the style for Ukraine'south NATO membership: in accordance with the alliance's rules, a country having territorial disputes cannot exist admitted to the bloc.

"Start of all, Zelensky ordered the attack during a speech a few weeks ago," Eliason says. "He made information technology very clear Ukraine's buildup was for that purpose."

By Dec 2021, the Kiev government had amassed upwards to 125,000 troops along the contact line with the Donbass republics. At the same time, OSCE reported more frequent use of heavy weapons, prohibited under the Minsk Agreements, by the Ukrainian Armed Forces against the breakaway regions.

The Western smoke-and-mirrors media campaign speculating about Russia's "imminent invasion" began in jump 2021, according to the investigative journalist. The mainstream press claimed that Russian federation was virtually to invade Ukraine.

"This is a huge breach in what constitutes a fact in the media. Published satellite images of Russian regular army positions accompanying these news reports showed the Russian army on bases over a day's travel away. In real terms this translated into 160 miles to 460 miles from the border," says Eliason, stressing that the Russian ground forces could hardly launch a surprise state attack from these positions.

ukraine soldiers donbass 2022

© Reuters / Gleb Garanich
Ukrainian service members are seen on the front end line about the village of Zaitseve in the Donetsk region, Ukraine February xix, 2022

In Nov 2021, the "Russian invasion narrative" defenseless its 2d jiff with the mainstream press and prominent social media influencers publishing maps and "imitation flag" scenarios of the supposed assault.

Erstwhile United states of america Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul launched nothing short of a tweet storm claiming that Ukrainian civilians will fight to the bitter end confronting Russian "occupiers". For his function, Hollywood star Sean Penn arrived in Ukraine to film a documentary about "Russian aggression."

Saur-Mogila (Saur Grave) Memorial in Donetsk Region ww2 memorial

© Sputnik / Valeriy Melnikov
Ruins of the Saur-Mogila (Saur Grave) Memorial in Donetsk Region where festive events were held to celebrate the Twenty-four hours of Donbass Liberation from Nazi Invaders.

Invisible War in Donbass

At the same fourth dimension, the Western mainstream media have kept silence for years nigh the shelling of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics by the Ukrainian government forces and neo-Nazi battalions.Just a limited number of independent American and European journalists and freelance photographers have been working in the Donbass region, chronicling the invisible war of the Ukrainian government against its own people. According to the UN, over xiii,000 take been killed in the region since the Maidan coup d'etat of February 2014.

"The barrage has been a constant feature in both republics for the last eight years," says Eliason. "The primary targets have always been civilian housing and infrastructure."

Over the past several weeks the Ukrainian military had intensified bombardment of the Donbass region, prompting the leadership of the DPR and LPR to launch an evacuation of children and elderly people to Russian federation. However, "Ukrainian spec ops groups accept been targeting evacuees leaving to Russia with mines and shells," says Eliason.

donabass defender militia ukraine

© AFP / Aleksey Chernyshev
Serviceman of Ukrainian volunteers battalion of Donbass prepares a machine gun on the positions near the village of Shirokine, Donetsk region on June vi, 2015

The US openly dismissed Russia'south warnings about the ongoing genocide of Russian-speakers and crimes confronting humanity in Eastern Ukraine. For his part, German language Chancellor Olaf Scholz claimed at the annual Munich Security Conference on 19 February that it is "really ridiculous" to say that "in that location is something like genocide" in Donbass.

Coming this from the German chancellor is "scandalous merely expected," says Eliason. Past turning a bullheaded eye to crimes committed by Ukrainian military machine and neo-Nazi militias in Eastern Ukraine, the Scholz-led coalition is indirectly supporting "what amounts to second generation 1930s-40s political Nazi thought" in Ukraine, according to the investigative journalist.

azov neo nazi ukraine flags

© AFP 2022 / Genya Savilov
Ukrainian nationalists and servicemen of the Azov neo-nazi battalion demonstrate in Kiev.

De-Nazification

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Thursday that Russia started a military functioning to protect Donbass in order to clear the country of Nazis. "Ideally, it is necessary to liberate Ukraine, clear it of Nazis, besides as pro-Nazi people and credo," Peskov told reporters.

In the wake of the 2014 Maidan coup, a number of corporate media sources questioned the part of Ukraine neo-Nazi groups in the nation's political life but very then it was largely scratched from the Western mainstream narrative.

In May 2018, Stephen F. Cohen, an influential American historian on Russia, warned in his op-ed for The Nation that "neo-fascists play an important official or tolerated function in the US-backed Ukraine." He bemoaned the fact that many Americans are unaware of 2 May 2014 "pogrom" in Odessa where roughly 50 people were burnt alive in the Trade Unions House by Ukrainian radical nationalists and neo-Nazis.

odessa

© Reuters
Pro-Kiev terrorist throws a Molotov cocktail at the called-for Trade Union building in Odessa, killing 48 people trapped inside. May ii, 2014.

The professor continued that the mainstream media has similarly overlooked the fact that the Azov Battalion, which is an official component of Kiev'southward armed services, has a pro-Nazi ideology. Back in 2017, The Loma quoted Azov's commander, Andriy Biletsky, as saying that the mission of Ukraine is to "lead the White Races of the earth in a final crusade for their survival ... against the Semite-led Untermenschen."

What's more, the rehabilitation of neo-Nazism in Ukraine has been tolerated by successive American administrations since the time of the 2005 "Orange Revolution" and continued to thrive, nether George Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, co-ordinate to Cohen.

The assistants of Joseph Biden, who used to be Obama's appointee in Ukraine, went fifty-fifty farther, by providing tonnes of weapons and training to the Ukrainian armed forces equally the latter concentrated along the line of contact with Donbass. On 16 December 2021, the United nations Full general Assembly discussed a resolution that called for combating the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices fuelling racism and xenophobia. The just ii countries that voted against it were the United states and Ukraine.