Even the FSB backed DNR Ombudsman from Donetsk said as much - month by month, year by year. In December 2020, December 2021 AND in January 2022 they had access to their own body counts. The result of all the collated figures in all the monthly and annual reports collected by Russia's own proxies is shown in the diagram below:
The 2020 source data is included in an annual report, and here it is. (Opens in new window)
2020 ANNUAL REPORT of the Human Rights Ombudsman in the Donetsk People’s Republic
Pertinent pages are 20-25, so the above link jumps to page 20.
Excerpts from page 21:
It is worth noting that the signing of peace agreements helped
to reduce the intensity of hostilities. Thus, the number of deaths
among the residents of the Donetsk People's Republic decreased by
9 times in 2017 compared to 2014, in 2019 – almost by 17 times,
in 2020 – by 50 times...
At the same time, a decrease in casualties among the civilian
population was facilitated by the unlimited truce announced in
Donbass on 21 July 2019.
Since 1 January 2020, as a result of the armed conflict in the
territory of the Donetsk People's Republic, 44 people have been
killed (Diagram 6).
The 2021 data that should've gone into another annual summary PDF was so unfavorable to Russian propaganda that it was left obfuscated inside the monthly reports, never making it into an annual summary.
Example 1: Dec 2021 monthly report | ombudsman-dnr.ru
Within the period between 1 January and 30 December 2021, in the
territory of the DPR, 7 civilians and 70 servicemen of the
Republic died ...
Seventy seven dead people (70 of them combatants) in the whole 12 month period, across hundreds of miles of contested territory, is not a genocide, is it. It's barely even a bus crash. Also, they deliberately don't say who killed the civilians. Example 2: Jan 2022 monthly report | ombudsman-dnr.ru
CASES OF INJURIES AND TRAUMAS OF VARYING SEVERITY AS A RESULT OF
ARMED AGGRESSION BY UKRAINE IN THE TERRITORY OF THE DPR FROM
JANUARY 01, 2022 TO JANUARY 28, 2022
CIVILIANS: 0
SERVICEMEN OF THE REPUBLIC: 2
IN TOTAL: 2
DEATH TOLL AS A RESULT OF ARMED AGGRESSION BY UKRAINE IN THE
TERRITORY OF THE DPR FROM JANUARY 01, 2022 TO JANUARY 21, 2022
CIVILIANS: 0
SERVICEMEN: 1
There's no equivalent data summarised in the Feb 2022 monthly report because the DNR didn't want to advertise the difference between the single digit deaths in that month pre-invasion and the multi-digit numbers after it. Doing so would've conclusively proved that the invasion on a "genocide" pretext was a false flag.
All we've ever seen from Russia and its stupid ass vranyo gobblers in support of either claim is unevidenced statement after unevidenced statement without a single atom of evidence EVER provided to back it up. Russia's "peacekeeping" argument for military intervention in Ukraine was strongest in 2014-2016, weakened in 2019, and was dead and buried by Jan 2021. Who says so? Well, Putin's own FSB in occupied Ukraine, the Wagner commanders, Girkin, and even Putin's own "human rights ombudsman" in Donetsk which has been maintaining the body count constantly since it was set up.
Basically, the only people who ever said there was a genocide against ethnic Russians in Ukraine were Russian politicians, Russian empire-fetishising fantasists, and carpet-bagging chancers like Stremousov and Pushilin. Not only were they lying all along, they are never even asked by their extremely useful idiot friends in the West to explain why it is that all the evidence that even Russia itself has collected suggests that they're all lying.