One of the fundamental #Russia narratives about the war was always that it’s “for protection of #Donbas”, except what they were doing since 2014 exactly opposite of protection. Economy of Donbas has dramatically deteriorated since Russia’s first invasion in 2014, industries were raided by organised crime, mines flooded and taken apart for scrap metal.

Humanitarian situation under Russian rule in Donbas has been also dire, even in places which weren’t bombed by Russian sieges, like Donetsk. Rule of law is parody even when compared to mainland Russia - there’s group of people who can do literally anything and won’t be prosecuted (Russian army, Kadyrovites, organised crime) and there are those who will be prosecuted for nothing, only to extort bribes and ransom.

Here’s a daily crime story from “Life in DNR” Telegram channel that reads like… I don’t know really if there’s any other place on Earth where people would live like that:

A woman from Makeevka smeared faeces on a stairway in Textil quarter - this way she revenged for a rape by a local man.

The news, in the best traditions of objective journalism, presents the narrative of both sides - she says she was raped, he says they had a relationship. She says she didn’t go to police “because of principles”, meaning a criminal “code of honor” which became a parallel legal system in Russia since Putin became president.

The level of civilization decline in Russia-occupied territories is quite shocking, especially as I was there in person as recently as 2013, just before the war started. Donetsk and the whole Donbas was a pretty standard industrial region, many of which you can see in Eastern Europe. Nobody was prosecuting people for speaking Russian (I did speak Russian there!) and nobody was dropping bombs. It all started with Russian invasion in April 2014.

Later, when I was going to expeditions in Russian Caucasus, I’ve met some people who were refugees from Donetsk and it was interesting how their narratives changed. Initially, they were like “wow Russia will now make use wealthy and fix everything”, because this was what Russian TV was saying. After a year it all faded in their voices, they simply stopped talking about economic growth or future of Donbas - it’s when Russian organised crime replaced Ukrainian authorities there and literally started taking over everything.

Even now Russian narratives are completely inconsistent to the extent of being bipolar without noticing how absurd they’ve become. On one hand, they sustain the excuse that all the destruction and decline is “because of the ongoing war” (which they started) but it’s all going to be rebuilt. On the other hand, there was no full-scale war going on between 2015-2022, yet they’ve only stolen and rebuilt nothing. On yet another hand, Russians claim situation in Donbas is “special” but from their own legal perspective Donetsk is just as much part of Russian Federation as Moscow, so all the same laws should apply. Or Grozny, for that matter, where Russian laws barely apply in practice, but when you ask Russians they’re like “oh it’s just Chechnya”… except in theory it has the same laws as Moscow again 🤷