DISINFO: Zelenskyy would relocate Russians from Donbas
SUMMARY
Zelenskyy is trying to get rid of his own voters. (...) The Ukrainian president is tirelessly lying about the residents in Donbas.
RESPONSE
The disinformation piece above is connected with an earlier statement the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made on 5 August 2021.
Speaking in a TV interview, the Ukrainian President said that the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine will never be Russian, and he encouraged residents there who consider themselves Russian and would want the region to become part of the Russian Federation to go and seek a place in Russia. However, in a large contradiction to the disinformation claim, Zelenskyy never said anything about relocating ethnic Russian people from the Donbas region, while the Ukrainian government has never shown any intention of that, either.
Accordingly, the unsubstantiated claim of "relocating Russians" from the Donbas region is aimed at promoting a picture of forceful eviction and fuelling the pro-Kremlin narrative of Russophobia in Ukraine. See similar examples of cases around the narrative here.