Ukraine is defending and fighting to reclaim its own territory, invaded by Russia and its proxies. Ukraine is not laying siege to the Donbas. The Donbas is Ukraine’s territory that Russia invaded and that the Kremlin’s proxies control by force. Russia has itself to blame for the death and destruction. The far-right party 'The Right Sector' failed to gain 5% of the vote required to enter Parliament and was not part of the new government. The quickly formed transitional government scheduled presidential elections for May 2014 and parliamentary elections for October 2014. After a vicious crackdown that killed more than 100 peaceful protesters, then Kremlin-backed President Yanukovych fled the country for Russia. Ukraine’s 2014 'Revolution of Dignity' was a popular democratic movement that took to the streets in support of Ukraine’s fuller integration with Europe. Putin’s so-called “special operation” to allegedly “liberate” Russian speakers in Ukraine has killed thousands of civilians in predominantly Russian-speaking cities such as Kharkiv, Kherson, and Mykolayiv, not to mention Mariupol and the Donbas region.

Russian speakers in Ukraine are able to freely exercise their human rights - freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association - unlike Russian citizens under Putin’s autocratic and increasingly repressive rule. No ultra-right political forces came to power in Ukraine in 2014.

Russia invades ukraine 2020