Russian propaganda continues to seek to justify the invasion of Ukraine and the bombing of civilian targets, including schools and hospitals. According to a recent narrative, a Ukrainian attack on Donbass was imminent, and Kiev was hiding its intentions by deploying troops to schools and hospitals.
NEWS: First Deputy Minister of Information of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), Daniil Bezsonov, told RT that he was in possession of a report from the chiefs of battalions no. 105 and 109 of the Territorial Defense. They were kept in electronic format by military commissariats in Volnovakha.
According to Bezsonov, the report shows that the Territorial Defense Units were deployed in municipal locations, including schools. He said medical institutions were being used to treat the injured, while sick people and children were forced to leave hospitals. […] “These are second-line units to support the offensive against us. These data show that the Ukrainian side had been already preparing an offensive against Donbass”, he said. Russia's Foreign Ministry has once called the bombing of the Donetsk with Tochka-U missiles by the Ukrainian military a crime against humanity.
NARRATIVE: Ukraine was preparing an offensive in Donbass, and Ukrainian troops had been deployed in schools, hospitals and other civilian locations.
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: Russian publications have attached a series of documents to the Telegram channels, which allegedly show that Moscow saved Donbass from genocide by its military operation to denazify Ukraine. If we analyze the documents in Ukrainian presented as evidence, we notice that it is a simple conversation between Ukrainian soldiers, an exchange of information between the Ukrainian army and the Volnovakha battalion. There is no information about an alleged plan to attack Donetsk or Luhansk. In the reports presented as classified, it is mentioned that the Territorial Defense Unit is made up of 72 people! Therefore, Kiev intended to storm Donetsk with a handful of volunteers, who are not even professional soldiers. Moreover, the Russian press and the representatives of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk fail to mention that the Volnovakha battalion was there in compliance with the Minsk Peace Agreement, because the distance of 30 km from the demarcation line was observed.
Ukraine tried until the very last minute to avoid a war with Russia, given the massive disproportion of forces, so it is absurd to say that with 150,000 Russian soldiers mobilized at the country's borders, Kiev would have made an irrational decision to attack.
Veridica.ro has recently debunked a series of fake news about an alleged massacre in Donbass, prepared by Ukraine via its territorial defense units. In reality, Ukraine's Territorial Defense is a new element in the security system, which has no offensive purpose. According to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the purpose of these Territorial Defense Units is to gain time in the event of an attack on a region or city until professional military personnel can be sent to the scene.
With regard to Russia's repeated claims that Ukrainian forces had been hiding inside various civilian targets, which would have justified their bombing, countless images from the scene, testimonies of surviving victims, findings of international organizations, accredited journalists, etc. shows unequivocally that the locations did not belong to the army.
