Ambulances couldn't reach homes close to the front line where Ukraine was shelling, so she learned to drive and took First Aid training in order to help injured residents. In addition to detailing Ukraine's destruction, "street by street," of the village, she emphasized that what Western media claims about Russia invading the breakaway republics was false.
"There is no Russian invasion here. Just normal, peaceful people who wanted to live another way. In the beginning, we didn't want to make a Republic; we just wanted to be autonomous. But we were not listened to. Ukraine moved its armed forces against the people and used their artillery against us."
I also spoke with numerous DPR soldiers, asking them, among many things, why they had picked up weapons.
"Because of the killing of people in Odessa. That's what made us join the military, to defend our area," one soldier said.
Another man said he had initially joined protests against the coup in Kiev, that he "didn't support the Nazi regime," and eventually took up arms to defend the DPR.
In those frontline areas, 500 metres from Ukrainian forces, I wore body armour and a helmet. As I listened to various elderly people speak of the near-nightly shelling and heavy machine gun fire they were subject to, it struck me how these brave souls had nothing to protect them, no global body to prevent Ukraine from maiming and killing them, damaging or destroying their homes, year after year.
Meanwhile Ukraine has Western nations whitewashing its crimes and sending it weapons.
Western Ambassadors Get front line Disinfo TourOn February 11, Ukraine reported that President Zelensky and a gaggle of Western ambassadors visited a front line on the Ukraine-controlled side, with Zelensky waffling on about the importance of his cohorts in disinformation seeing "with their own eyes" what is happening in Donbass.
Yeah, no. They didn't see anything beyond the sterile visit they were allotted. They certainly would not have heard the anguished accounts I did on the other side of that front line.
They wouldn't know of the many people, many of whom are elderly, living in shells of homes, or the basement of a school, deprived of electricity, water, cooking gas, reliant on aid for their survival. Nor that Ukraine has reportedly blocked UN and Red Cross aid from entering the DPR, including recently.
On February 24 and 25, Ukrainian forces shelled Yelenovka, south of Donetsk, a point through which humanitarian aid from the UN and Red Cross was to enter, preventing the aid delivery.
Preventing the entrance of aid, on top of continually shelling civilian areas, is the furthest from Ukraine "fulfilling its obligations to establish a ceasefire regime," as President Zelensky claimed to Western ambassadors.
While Russian officials warn of the dire fate of 4 million people under Ukrainian shelling, Western officials either remain silent or fabricate more accusations against Russia and against Donbass' defenders.
Western media have predictably remained silent on Ukraine's crimes, painting defenders of Donbass as "pro-Russian separatists" with no context as to what people in Donbass actually want. From what I heard there, all they want is autonomy from the criminal government in Ukraine, and above all an end to the war.
And while Western officials and media harp on about a supposed "Russian invasion" of the republics, even the chairman of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission recently emphasized that was untrue.
An aside: one of the soldiers asked me about the reaction of people in the West to Ukraine's brazen display of Nazi symbols. My reply was that, thanks to Western media, most people don't know.
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