DISINFO: Russia does not help Donbas militarily
SUMMARY
Russia is providing humanitarian and economic, not military, aid to the residents of the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine.
The absence of Russian military units was confirmed by the leadership of the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Back in 2019, at a meeting of the UN Security Council, the head of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, Ertugrul Apakan, officially stated that no Russian armed forces had been identified in the Donbas.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about the lack of Russian involvement in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The war in Eastern Ukraine is a well-documented act of aggression by Russian armed forces, ongoing since February 2014. The claim was neither critically challenged nor counterbalanced in the article.
In 2015, during an inspection of the storage sites of heavy weapons of “DNR” militants, OSCE SMM observers saw the Russian military guarding one of the sites. At the same time, the OSCE noted that the Russian military did not have any insignia. In 2016, the deputy chairman of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, Alexander Hug, confirmed to Ukrainian journalists that the OSCE SMM has information that there are Russian troops in Eastern Ukraine. In addition, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine systematically records cases of the transfer of both military and weapons from Russia to the occupied territory of Donbas. OSCE has repeatedly emphasised that Russian-separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine often use temporarily declared ceasefire in order to receive supplies with arms and ammunition from Russia under the guise of humanitarian aid.
Moreover, Apakan statement before the Security Council in 2019 did not deny Russian involvement in the Donbas as stated in the claim. Apakan said: "There have been cases where we have reported in the past of people in uniforms, claiming to be from the Russian Federation and other countries as well as mercenaries. SMM has reported its observations of vehicles bearing Russian flags but did not observe the origin. I have to say in order to avoid any misunderstandings, in these reports, there has been no reference to military units". You can see the video of the statement here [from 2:45:00 to 2:45:47].
See similar cases that the OSCE has never recorded the presence of the Russian military in Donbas, that the events in Donbas are an internal Ukrainian conflict in which Russian troops were never involved, and that the OSCE confirms that there are no Russian soldiers in Donbas.