There is nothing in Putin’s history
or now to indicate a benevolent dictator for them.
This is Putin’s attempt to retake the area when nations left during the closure of the Soviet Block Russia in 1991.
Putin wants the mines! The mineral wealth of the area remains the same strategic prize that Adolf Hitler recognized during WWII.
Ukraine became independent again when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. This started a period of transition to a market economy. On 21 November 2013, then-president Viktor Yanukovych suspended implementation of an association agreement with the European Union. This decision resulted in mass protests by pro-Europeans known as the “Euromaidan” or the “Revolution of Dignity”. After months of such protests, the Ukrainian parliament IMPEACHED Yanukovych on 22 February 2014.
Then, on 22–23 February, the Russo-Ukrainian War Putin started another war when Russian forces invaded Donetsk, Luhansk &Crimea.
On 18 June 2015, Yanukovych was officially deprived of the title of president by the parliament. On 24 January 2019, he was sentenced in absentia to thirteen years’ imprisonment for high treason by a Ukrainian court.
On February 18, 2017 President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a decree for recognition of “passports” issued by the so-called DNR and LNR and other documents issued by so-called DNR and LNR in Russia. These “passports” were de facto accepted in Russia before the Putin’s decree. But, his decree made them officially recognized by the Russian Federation.
Luhansk people’s republic adopted the Russian ruble as its basic monetary unit on 1 March 2017. The ruble is the “official” “major currency” in both “republics” since 2015.
Most of the Ukrainian assets in the occupied territories were stolen by occupation forces in late 2014 and 2015.
Some remained under Ukrainian jurisdiction until 1 March 2017. These were taken by occupation authorities introducing external “temporary administrations” to the companies ie Luhansk branch Ukrtelecom telephone company.
The Russian pattern of “Transnistrian” policy controls zones of frozen conflicts in Moldova (Transnistria region), Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), and in Ukraine annexed Crimean peninsula and the Donbas. Russia’s are part of a wider pattern using separatist conflicts to create corruption and criminality as ‘Trojan horses’ to block progress in reform-minded periphery countries.
IMPORTANT
In 2014, when the war in Donbas started, many of RNU members joined pro-Russian NAZI forces moved into Ukraine. During a telephone conversation OF Barkashov and a local Donetsk activist Boitsov was intercepted. Barkashov said to Boitsov that he could call off the referendum on independence of the territory.
Barkashov said, “It is NOT necessary to perform referendum the legit way. He said that in the end no one would care about it. All that Boitsov has to do is to write whatever he finds suitable. If he wants, he can say that 99% of people voted for joining Russia.”
“Does your wife know why 3 Ukrainian oblasts (states) seceded after the 2014 ousting of Democratically elected President Yanukovich? Was it because Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk wanted to join the Russian rapists in another Katyn forest massacre?”
“You’re not allowed to talk about that, you must be a Putin lover!”
/s lol
And how Ukraine shelled and killed the people in Donbas after, for 10 years. Slaughtered them.
Largely neo-Nazis like Azov. They had free reign to kill them at will. And did so. That’s a good part of why Russia invaded, to stop the slaughter of ethnic Rusians there. They voted for independence, but instead got slaughtered. They ASKED Putin for help.
Russia created a false “separatist” movement through agents, money, arms, mafia-style intimidation, murder, plata or plomo threats, and then troops. There was no hint of a separatist movement in 2010 and soccer games in the Donbas were a sea of Ukrainian flags.