You follow Al Jazeera as well as RT, don’t you moon? Here are some snippets from their latest report on blameless Donbas:
After almost eight years of existence, the “republics” are understood to have evolved into totalitarian, North Korea-like statelets … secret police and “loyal” residents monitor every word, phone call and text message.
“It looks like the 1930s in the Soviet Union, a classic gulag,” Stanislav Aseyev, a publicist who was kidnapped in 2017 in Donetsk told Al Jazeera. For almost two years he was incarcerated and tortured.
Thousands of others were tortured and abused in the “cellars”, according to rights groups and witnesses. “The cellars where prisoners are held in Donetsk, and the widespread use of torture, are among the most obvious human rights issues,” said Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog group.
The political heyday of Donetsk began in 2010, when its native Viktor Yanukovych became Ukraine’s president and brought cohorts of his cronies to Kyiv. They tried to wrest control of Ukraine’s politics and economy – but triggered months-long protests that ended in February 2014 when the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from office.
Yes, the “People’s Republics” are a regular paradise. You can read the rest here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/22/what-are-donetsk-and-luhansk-ukraines-separatist-statelets