Ten years since the start of Ukraine’s military operation in Donbas

April 12, 2024, marks ten years since the start of Ukraine’s military operation against the Russian hybrid aggression in the Donbas. On April 12, 2014, Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council adopted a decision to launch an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) against the Russian “little green men,” who appeared in Ukrainian cities in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts disguised as “local separatists” and supported by activists brought from Russia. In a few months, a successful offensive of the Ukrainian military in response to Russia’s hybrid aggression was stopped by a brutal military intervention of the Russian Armed Forces. 

Following the staged covert coup in the East of Ukraine, Russia established the puppet quasi-republics of “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic”. It fueled a war in the Donbas region, which lasted until February 2022. Incapable of breaking Ukraine with eight years of this low-intensity conflict, the criminal Putin regime used it as a pretext to launch its genocidal and full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.   

Today, the brave people of Ukraine continue to fight for freedom, sovereignty, and territorial unity against a deadly and brutal Russian aggressor state, which has occupied five Ukrainian regions: Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. Through their policies in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, the Russians are striving to eliminate Ukrainian national identity through mass shootings, deportations, and violence against the civilian population, abduction of Ukrainian children, and committing other crimes against civilians, like deliberate looting, theft of private property and valuables. Moreover, the Russians are purposefully changing the population in these territories by bringing modern-day ‘resettlers’ from the Russian Federation, just like the Moscow regime did in the final chapter of the Holodomor 90 years ago, when it resettled the Ukrainian lands that it had ethnically cleansed with people from Russia.

As the war continues, the UWC appeals to all of Ukraine’s allies to deny the cynical Russian propaganda and disinformation and consolidate their military support of Ukraine so that it can liberate all its lands from the deadly and brutal Russian occupation and put an end to this war.

“Today, it is our duty to stand strong and united in the face of the deadly Russian military invasion. Wherever we live, we must ensure that all possible international support is there for Ukraine, which desperately needs the necessary weapons to win the war and defeat Russia. The heinous Putin regime must be held accountable for all its crimes!” stated UWC President Paul Grod.