No one threatened Donetsk or Luhansk, least of all Kyiv, until the revolt forced the Ukrainian army to intervene. “The population [of the two oblasts] did not need a war” and it has not brought them anything but suffering. “But there are forces interested in provoking the conflict and using the population of these regions for their own selfish interests.”
These include the Putin regime which has used the crisis to boost its domestic standing, “part of the eastern Ukrainian oligarchy and political elite” who lost their positions when Yanukovich fled, and “Russian nationalists, ‘imperialists,’ ‘Cossack,’ Orthodox clericals, national socialists who form the greater part of volunteers from Russia.”
Not one of these three groups needs the residents of Donetsk or Luhansk except as tools for their own purposes, but they collectively and not the people of the two Ukrainian oblasts are fanning the fires of war. If they ceased to do so, the conflict would end. In the meantime, one can only hope that the people there and elsewhere will learn to “oppose Russian disinformation.”
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