It is no secret that NATO has been heavily involved in the conflict [in Donbas]. There are pictures of the presence of American soldiers. Nobody talked about it. We know there were soldiers, Polish mercenaries, it’s very annoying. After a six-month investigation, evidence has been recovered confirming that the Americans were present and supplied a whole bunch of weapons. They were not shy about it. A journalist doing his job could have found this information. Russia has been accused of being the main actor and aggressor in the conflict, but no one has questioned the role of NATO and the Americans. And we know that. Just type in Google, you will find this information but it has always been silenced.
No evidence is given concerning the presence of NATO troops or Polish mercenaries among pro-Ukrainian forces. This is a recurrent conspiracy narrative advanced by Russian media. Pro-Kremlin sources repeatedly accuse foreign military of taking part in the war in Ukraine without providing any evidence, see dozens of cases in our database. Earlier, Polish Ministry for National Defence and Lithuania's Armed Forces have confirmed that their soldiers have only delivered trainings to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and do not take part in combat actions. Thus, in 2014 Robert Pszczel, Director of NATO Information Office in Moscow, was invited to the programme ‘Politics’ (Channel Rossiya 1). His opponents, notorious Russian nationalists Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Aleksandr Rutskoy, accused Pszczel of NATO fuelling the war in Donbas and stated that ‘hundreds of Poles’ were killed in Donbas, their bodies ‘secretly being taken to Warsaw’. No forensic evidence of such a large scale operation was ever given. Russia’s state-run news agency RIA has also reported the presence of Polish mercenaries in Donbas, quoting Eduard Basurin, deputy chief of headquarters of the self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic. Basurin expressed confidence that there were foreign mercenaries near Debaltseve but added they did not have any ‘personal possessions’ to prove it. “As soon as we find them we’ll show,” he said. So far, it did not happen. See more examples of "Polish mercenaries in Ukraine" in the digest composed by Belsat TV channel based in Warsaw. As for American soldiers in Donbas, the disinformation outlet does not publish the "proving pictures" to support such a huge claim. At that, over the five years of war that has pitted Ukrainian forces against Russia-backed separatists, the United States has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in military gear to Ukraine: night-vision goggles, flak jackets, vehicles, counter-battery radars. After years of internal debate that preceded his administration, President Donald Trump began supplying Ukraine with sophisticated anti-tank missiles known as Javelins. The US Congress' proposals to send weaponry to Ukraine further intensified in response to an incident in November 2018, when Russian Coast Guard ships seized three Ukrainian boats and 24 sailors in the Kerch Strait near the illegally annexed by Russia Crimean Peninsula. The disinformation outlet visibly does not deny the Russian aggression in Ukraine. But in the best case, it mixes up things. It tries to equalize the official military aid to a sovereign State, which followed after years of assessments, parliamentary votes and discussions after further escalation incidents, with Russian still non-officially recognized intervention in Ukraine since 2014. The Russian aggression, which provoked the war in Donbas, was led by identified Russian FSB officer. The graves of Russian mercenaries, in contrast to the Polish ones, are found. See more disinformation cases on the war in Donbas.