Another masterstroke by Putin, imo. He got some of his human trash off the streets of Moscow by paying them to go to E. Ukraine. Now they are stuck there, and Putin doesn’t care one whit about it.
There were locals, too. Remember that Donbass is an economically depressed region, dependent solely on coal extraction and metallurgy for revenue and with high unemployment. That is the human material criminals and insurgents are made everywhere.