Telling a lie is easy; to sustain one is hard, especially if those at whom it is directed are paying attention. Those spreading falsehoods find it difficult to repeat them over and over again without eventually allowing the truth to come...
The local authorities of ORDLO (“certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts,” the official designation of the occupied territories in the east of Ukraine) were appointed by Russia to control the local population and economy....
Read the prisoner swap story: Largest prisoner swap in Donbas: 73 Ukrainians released from captivity of Russian-run “republics” Three years behind bars in his occupied hometown Yenhen Chudnetsov, a resident of occupied Makiivka and a...
Russia had effectively blocked the prisoner exchange process in the Donbas for 15 months from September 2016, when two Ukrainian nationals were released from captivity. This September Ukraine was ready to release 309 prisoners in...
Oleksandr Zakharchenko, the self-proclaimed leader of the Russian client statelet, the Donetsk Peoples Republic, has called for the confiscation of all agricultural food products and their being handed over to his regime, an ugly order in...
When his native city Donetsk was run over by Russian-militant forces in the summer of 2014 and severed from Ukraine by an illegitimate referendum which proclaimed a “Donetsk People’s Republic,” local artist Serhiy...
The text of this “Order” dated Novemeber 3, 2017 has been published on the “DNR” website. “Cereals and grains, as well as fruits growing on bushes, trees and vines that have been harvested without permission on state and...
Masked faces, distorted voices, poses from action movies and ready-to-use firearms – the Russian-language Internet is full of videos showing the threat coming from radical groups. They can call themselves pro-Russian guerillas in...
Russia controls the situation in its proxy state in eastern Ukraine, the “Donetsk People’s Republic” (“DNR”) via Russian-established law enforcement agencies, or siloviki, which are at the top of the pyramid...
Background of the takeover of Donbas The protests against the Euromaidan (2013-2014) in Luhansk and Donetsk were mostly staged by pro-Russian local elites, linked to the Yanukovych’s Party of Regions (PoR). However, Russia...
The three-month campaign leading up to the spring presidential elections officially started on 31 December 2018. According to current polls, no single candidate stands out. Among leading candidates, however, most can be classified as...
