DISINFO: Russophobia and Nazis are the main reasons for the conflict in Donbas
SUMMARY
The main reasons for the conflict in Ukraine was that the Eastern regions rejected Russophobia, Nazi glorification and the ideology of Nazism. The tragedy of Donbas is that Russia did not come to the aid of local residents when the Ukrainian authorities sent tanks and artillery with aviation against unarmed civilians. […] in the cities of Donbas, women and their husbands met the heavy equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces with their bare hands.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the war in Ukraine, aiming to portray the conflict as Ukraine's civil war. The war in Eastern Ukraine is not a civil conflict, but a well-documented act of ongoing aggression by Russian armed forces, since February 2014. The military actions in Donbas began after separatist rebels and militants from Russia seized key areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. On 7 April, pro-Russian rebels took control of the SBU armoury in Donetsk. On the same day, they declared the so-called "Donetsk Peoples' Republic". On 12 April, 52 armed militants led by Igor Girkin (Strelkov), a retired colonel of Russia's military intelligence GRU, attacked governmental offices in the city of Sloviansk and later in Kramatorsk. Both cities were under militants' control until the beginning of July 2014. The Ukrainian government reacted to the attack by introducing an "anti-terrorist operation" in the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts which officially began on 15 April. Read similar disinformation alleging that Americans provoked the overthrow of legitimate authority in Ukraine and civil war in Donbas, that Donetsk and Luhansk independence triggered a Ukrainian military operation, that Euromaidan coup led to civil war in Donbas, that war in Ukraine is a civil war.