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Originally posted by PredatorStyle View Post
"The initial protests in the Donbas were largely native expressions of discontent with the new Ukrainian government.[52] Russian involvement at this stage was limited to its voicing of support for the demonstrations. The emergence of the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk began as a small fringe group of the protesters, independent of Russian control.[52][53] This unrest, however, only evolved into an armed conflict because of Russian military backing for what had been a marginal group as part of the Russo-Ukrainian War. The conflict was thus, in the words of historian Hiroaki Kuromiya, "secretly engineered and cleverly camouflaged by outsiders".[54]
There was limited support for separatism in the Donbas before the outbreak of the war, and little evidence of support for an armed uprising.[55] Russian claims that Russian speakers in the Donbas were being persecuted or even subjected to "genocide" by the Ukrainian government, forcing its hand to intervene, were false.[54][56]
Fighting continued through the summer of 2014, and by August 2014, the Ukrainian "Anti-Terrorist Operation" was able to vastly shrink the territory under the control of the pro-Russian forces, and came close to regaining control of the Russo-Ukrainian border.[57] In response to the deteriorating situation in the Donbas, Russia abandoned what has been called its "hybrid war" approach, and began a conventional invasion of the region.[57][58] As a result of the Russian invasion, DPR and LPR insurgents regained much of the territory they had lost during the Ukrainian government's preceding military offensive.[59]
Only this Russian intervention prevented an immediate Ukrainian resolution to the conflict.[60][61][62] This forced the Ukrainian side to seek the signing of a ceasefire agreement.[63] Called the Minsk Protocol, this was signed on 5 September 2014.[64] As this failed to stop the fighting, another agreement, called Minsk II was signed on 12 February 2015.[65] This agreement called for the eventual reintegration of the Donbas republics into Ukraine, with a level of autonomy.[65] The aim of the Russian intervention in the Donbas was to establish pro-Russian governments that, upon reincorporation into Ukraine, would facilitate Russian interference in Ukrainian politics.[66] The Minsk agreements were thus highly favourable to the Russian side, as their implementation would accomplish these goals.[67]
The conflict led to a vast exodus from the Donbas: half the region's population were forced to flee their homes.[68] A UN OHCHR report released on 3 March 2016 stated that, since the conflict broke out in 2014, the Ukrainian government registered 1.6 million internally displaced people who had fled the Donbas to other parts of Ukraine.[69] Over 1 million were said to have fled elsewhere, mostly to Russia. At the time of the report, 2.7 million people were said to continue to live in areas under DPR and LPR control,[69] comprising about one-third of the Donbas.[70]
Despite the Minsk agreements, low-intensity fighting along the line of contact between Ukrainian government and Russian-controlled areas continued until 2022. Since the start of the conflict there have been 29 ceasefires, each intended to remain in force indefinitely, but none of them stopped the violence.[71][72][73] This led the war to be referred to as a "frozen conflict".[74] On 11 January 2017, the Ukrainian government approved a plan to reintegrate the occupied part of the Donbas and its population into Ukraine.[75] The plan would give Russian-backed political en****** partial control of the electorate and has been described by Zerkalo Nedeli as "implanting a cancerous cell into Ukraine's body."[76] This was never implemented, and was subject to public protest.
A 2018 survey by Sociological Group "Rating" of residents of the Ukrainian-controlled parts of the Donbas found that 82% of respondents believed there was no discrimination against Russian-speaking people in Ukraine.[77] Only 11% saw some evidence of discrimination.[77] The same survey also found that 71% of respondents did not support Russia's military intervention to "protect" the Russian-speaking population, with only 9% offering support for that action.[77] Another survey by Rating, conducted in 2019, found that only 23% of those Ukrainians polled supported granting the Donbas autonomous status,[78] whilst 34% supported a ceasefire and "freezing" the conflict, 23% supported military action to recover the occupied Donbas territories, and 6% supported separating these territories from Ukraine"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbas...4%E2%80%932022)
. I wonder if even toilet plunger is dumb enough to parrot this.
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