The harrowing truth of the 'forgotten' children caught in Putin's war with Ukraine?

The harrowing truth of the 'forgotten' children caught in Putin's war with Ukraine?
  
You can read and trust the Daily Mail, or you can learn and accept the truth.

So you want to know the truth? Can you handle it?
  
Here's an inconvenient truth from a Ukrainian-Russian-American lawyer and former police officer who spent May and June of 2014 in Lugansk, East Ukraine with his family:

1. The vast majority of he people of East Ukraine's Donetsk Coal Basin (Donbass), have a strong ethnic, linguistic and religious connection with Russia. 

Donbass became a part of Ukraine in 1922 only because Lenin and his Bolsheviks needed additional regions in Ukraine in ordere to have enough votes for Ukraine to "voluntarily" join the Soviet Union. 
    
The people of Donbass  have never supported radical West Ukrainian nationalists, such as the Svoboda party, who despise Russians and who consider Ukrainian Nazi war criminals and collaborators, like Stepan Bandera, Ukrainian heroes and patriots.

Donbass' residents have been told by their grandparents of the atrocities committed by radical Ukrainian nationalist Nazi collaborators during WW II not just in Western and Central Ukraine, but also in Eastern Ukraine where Ukrainian Nazi collaborators where brought in by the Nazis as local police ("polizei" in German) to maintain order and help neutralize anti-Nazi insurgents.
  
The Donbass region has very strong economic connections with Russia, including a substantial share of industrial goods being exported to Russia.

2. The people of Donbass were appalled by the violence unleashed by Ukrainian radicals during the Euromaidan protests at mostly unarmed Ukrainian police who were simply defending government buildings.

If these US-supported violent Ukrainian nationalist radicals were not afraid to attack Ukrainian police officers with chains, metal spikes, Molotov Cocktails, bleach, acid, pistols and rifles, then what would these people do to ordinary pro-Russian Donbass residents when they came to power?

The answer came soon enough: 

Around February 22, 2014 the time that Ukrainian President Yanukovich, a resident and supporter of Donbass, was being illegally ousted from office,  busloads of Yanukovich supporters (Anti-EuroMaydan activists) returning to Crimea were stopped and ambushed by Ukrainian nationalists. many passengers were beaten, tortured and killed while local police stood by, watched and even participated.

When Crimeans held their referendum in March of 2014 (under the protection of Russian troops) and overwhelmingly voted to return to Russia (Crimea was "administratively transferred" from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 by Soviet Union's leader Nikita Khruschyev), many residents of Donbass preferred to be in Putin's Russia that in Ukraine ruled by pro-US/NATO Ukrainian Nationalists.
   
In the beginning of April 2014, Anti-EuroMaydan and pro-Russian supporters seized government buildings and authority in Donetsk and Lugansk regions. 
  
In April of 2014 government authority was seized in Slavyansk, a 100K+ city in Donetsk region, by pro-Russian activists with the military support of Russian "volunteers" including former Russian FSB officer Igor Girkin (Strelkov). 

Instead of negotiating, the new interim Yatsenyuk-Turchinov Ukrainian government sent in the Ukrainian Army, newly created National Guard and volunteer battalions staffed with Ukrainian Nationalists, who began a scorched earth siege of the city with disregard for civilian casualties.  
  
The residents of Donbass watched in horror and began to create armed self-defense units.

On May 2, 2014 dozens of Anti-EuroMaydan activists were burned alive, beaten, choked and shot to death in Odessa's House of Unions by radical Ukrainian Nationalists -- while the local police stood by and did nothing.

With all this mind, on May 11, 2014 the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk voted overwhelmingly for "governmental autonomy" from the new Yatsenyuk-Turchinov government in Kyiv, a government that the residents of Donbass considered illegitimate and dominated by Ukrainian nationalists who, if necessary, would turn any town that refused to recognize their authority, into a Slavyansk or Odessa.

Unlike what we read in Western government and Corporate Establishment Media, the referendum was democratic, had a > 80% voter turn out and those who voted against governmental autonomy (no more than 10% of voters) did so openly and without fear of retribution. These are my honest personal observations.

Many residents of Donbass mistakenly thought that Russian would offer them voluntary annexation like Crimea or would bring in Russian peace-keeping troops to protect them like the Trans-Dniester Region of Moldavia. When neither of these things happened, the local population in Donbass became afraid of what would come next.

When President Poroshenko was voted into office on May 25, 2014, instead of trying to negotiate a peaceful political settlement, he escalated the anti-autonomy/federalist/separatist military operation (the so-called "Anti-Terrorist Operation", a/k/a "ATO").

On May 26, 2014 the Donetsk International Airport was heavily damaged by Ukrainian Air Force strikes.  
  
After President Poroshenko's inauguration, many leading political, cultural, public and business leaders of Donbass asked him to hold negotiations withe the political leaders of the Donestk and Lugansk autonomy/federalism movements, but instead he labeled them separatist terrorists and escalated the ATO.

Villages, towns and cities of Lugansk and Donetsk regions were indiscriminately shelled and bombed by the Ukranian Armed Forces (UAF). 

War crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the UAF when civilian areas were shelled and bombed (even those residential areas where there were no insurgents) without prior warning and without any organized evacuation of local residents.

The ATO used infamous anti-insurgency tactics against the local population -- tactics espoused and perfected not only by dictators and authoritarian regimes throughout the 20th century but also by the U.S. military and intelligence communities -- meant to shell, bomb, starve and scare the local population into submission and abandonment of the insurgents. 
  
The Ukrainian government did not care apparently that the local population included the innocent and vulnerable segments, such as the elderly, women and children.

Why? Because Ukrainian President Poroshenko and his government received approval from their foreign supporters & allies (U.S. first and foremost) for the ATO and assurances that the US/EU political establishment would turn a blind eye on the collateral damage (i.e. war crimes against civilians and crime against humanity) necessary to contain and/or defeat the pro-Russian federalist/autonomy menace that would threaten the new pro-US/EU/NATO Ukrainian government.

The Ukrainian and Western government and corporate media supporting US/EU/NATO policies and objectives in Ukraine also turned a blind eye on the UAF atrocities and engaged in blatant propaganda designed to falsely show the world that instead of the Ukrainian Army fighting local insurgents (who constitute at least 90% of the insurgent forces in Donetsk and Lugansk) and killing local civilians in the process, the Ukrainian people are battling a Russian invasion of East Ukraine.

This Daily Mail article on the consequences of war for East Ukraine's children has the same propaganda spin. 

Instead of putting blame for war crimes and crimes against humanity on the Ukrainian government and armed forces -- the side that, thanks to superior government firepower, undeniably has committed the vast majority of such crimes against the local population -- the Daily Mail, attempts to place blame for such crimes against children on Russia and its President Putin. 

How? For supporting and providing assistance to the DNR/LNR self-proclaimed republics and their populations after they were literally left to fend for themselves by the Ukrainian government without food, water, electricity, natural gas, heat, sewage, medical care, education, transportation, other vital government services and jobs.

If you think that I'm making up the ruthless & criminal approach of the Ukrainian government and President Poroshenko, then take a look at President Poroshenko's own words below .

So who's to blame for the death and suffering of Donbass' children, Daily Mail?  

How about the hundreds of thousands of children of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria?  

Russia and Putin?

I don't think so.

Gregory Krasovsky
   
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"Poroshenko: "Their children will hole up in the basements - this is how we win the war!" 
Published on Nov 14, 2014

Petro Poroshenko announced another cynical approach of the Ukrainian government to the recalcitrant residents of Donbass during his speech in Odessa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHWHqj8g7Bk

Ukraine’s Tragicomedy
Made in the USA
by Justin Raimondo, June 05, 2015 

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/06/04/ukraines-tragicomedy/

"Unlike tranquil Crimea, east Ukraine is in blood-stained turmoil, with the inhabitants refusing to buckle under to rule from Kiev. 

This may have something to do with the merciless pounding they have taken from the Ukrainian military, which has murdered thousands of civilians in aerial bombardments of cities and towns. Kiev’s attitude toward its citizens in the eastern part of the country was succinctly summed up by Poroshenko, who famously declared:

“Our children will go to school, to kindergarten, while theirs’ will hole up in basements. This is how we will win this war!”

His statement has got to be the first time in recorded history that a government leader has boasted about targeting children in wartime."