DISINFO: Ukraine's dehumanisation of Donbas people is similar to West’s dehumanisation of Serbs
SUMMARY
Ukraine is carrying out the policy of dehumanisation of Donbas residents as part of its Russophobic line. This resembles the West’s dehumanisation policy against the Serbs.
RESPONSE
This is a manipulative attempt from pro-Kremlin propagandist media to draw a similarity between the war in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas and the 1999 crisis in the former Yugoslavia.
These cases are absolutely different and cannot be compared. In Kosovo, there was a war with thousands of casualties and hundreds of thousands of refugees, which the Western countries stopped. There was no war in Ukraine until Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014. In 1999 NATO sought to cease ethnic cleansing in the Kosovo region.
Kremlin propaganda uses the story of Yugoslavia to defend Moscow's activities in areas of frozen conflicts (i.e. Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Donbas, Nagorno-Karabakh, etc). The parallels between the history of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the current situation in Donbas are incorrect. Donbas is historically a Ukrainian region. The so-called DPR (or DNR) and LNR are parts of the Ukrainian regions Donetsk and Luhansk but supported by Russian military units. Not a single country has recognised them as independent entities.
Ukrainian authorities do not dehumanise those who live in the occupied territories in the East. When they move to the government-controlled territories, they are treated like all other Ukrainian citizens, except those who have collaborated with the Russian occupational administration and committed crimes against Ukraine.
See similar cases of manipulation: Double standards in Western attitudes on status of Kosovo, Crimea, Crimean referendum was the will of the Crimeans, while Kosovo was an outside intervention, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict leads to more tensions in the Donbas.