The myth of the "genocide in Donbas"

With a side of the "Ukrainian biolabs"!

A random result from search for “Donbas genocide” on Facebook

You probably have met this person at least once on the Internet - someone genuinely convinced that since 2014, Ukraine has been committing genocide in Donbas, killing its 14000 Russian-speaking citizens. The screenshot above is an example of such a claim.

When you meet them again, please do me a favour. Ask them for the source of this information.

Of course, I know and you know, that such persons reject the Western imperialist notion of „sources”. Usually they just get spooked away by this question and the only answer you receive is being banned/blocked. But maybe you’ll have more luck than me?

This propaganda claim is too absurd to be used for domestic purposes. Russian media don’t say it in Russian, but they claim it in Western languages - this particular screenshot comes from some propaganda channel clearly intended for Africa.

It doesn’t even hold water when you apply common sense. Was it a single, 14k-strong massacre? So it should have a discreet date, location, right? When and where exactly did it happen, then?

Or maybe it was - say - 7 massacres per 2k? Or maybe the famous Ukrainian Nazi death squads were killing 5 persons a day? OK, fair enough, but where are the graves? Where is ANY EVIDENCE TO BACK IT UP?

Since it is impossible to find the answer to this question, I will assume that the number of “14000 victims” was simply taken from the UNHR report from early 2022, quoted below. It too similar, right?

A snippet from the UN report on the 2014-2022 war in Ukraine

But the thing is: this is NOT a number of victims of the mythical “Ukrainian Nazis”. This is a total number of casualties from BOTH SIDES of the conflict.

Soldiers of both sides constitute the majority of this number. It’s about 4400 Ukrainian soldiers and 6500 of the “armed groups” (as the report neatly describes the Russian-led paramilitaries, who invaded Ukraine in 2014 pretending to be “local separatists”).

About 3400 are civilians. Again, on BOTH SIDES. This number includes 298 victims of the MH-17 civilian airliner, shot down by the Russian-led paramilitaries. Igor Girkin (born in Moscow, resident of Moscow, who acted as the “leader of the Donbas separatists”) is one of the three persons sentenced in absentia for this war crime.

By the way: please notice that this graph shows that most of casualties happened during the first two years of the war. After 2018, the conflict was longer that intensive, it was reduced to artillery counterbattery duels (Russian propagandists call these duels “the Ukrainian shelling od Donbas”, just as if Russians did not fire back for some strange reason). This once again shows how false it is to think that “Russia had no other option but to invade to stop the massacre of 25 soldiers a year on both sides”.

Much like the “Ukrainian biolabs”, this propaganda claim takes some real information (“14000 casualties of the Russian invasion”), and twists it into “14000 casualties of Ukrainian genocide”. For someone ignorant or malicious persons, like Elon Musk or Aaron Mate, this will do the trick.

Glenn Greenwald is getting excited by the biolab nothing burger (via his Twitter profile)

The similar twist was done to the famous “Ukrainian biolabs”. Every country has biological laboratories. Heck, there was one in the elementary school I graduated years ago.

“Oh no, we don’t mean that kind of biolab, we mean the one where the evil scientists develop biological weapons, while laughing diabolically!” - yes, OK, but where is the evidence for THIS KIND of biolabs in Ukraine? Again - nowhere.

“But Victoria Nuland admitted…”. Admitted what? The existence of laboratories in Ukraine? Of course they exist. They exist in every country.

That they contain dangerous stuff? Of course they contain dangerous stuff. Although personally I would rather go with chemlabs - even in your average school chemistry lab, they have truly dangerous stuff (you don’t want to mess with the hydrochloride gas, Glenny-boy).