A first-hand, scary testimony from Ukraine

3 min readMar 3, 2022

“I can no longer silently watch the Kremlin bots spread disinformation about Ukraine and Donbas region in particular. It pisses me off.”

This is how Kate, a 26 years old woman, originary from Donbas, started her blog post three days ago. Kate is not a politician, not even a journalist, she’s just a person who used to blog about her hobbies but had to leave her home twice in the span of just few years because of Russia. Or, better to say, because of Putin. Because no matter what your stance on NATO may be, no matter what happened before, what Putin is doing right now, in 2022, to common people, even children, has no justification. And I bet that “it pisses me off” doesn’t even start to cover it, but Kate’s insight is very helpful to understand what’s going on in Ukraine difficult these days and where it started. So here it is, used with permission and with the enocuragement to share this story as much as possible.

“As many of my long-time followers know, I am not only Ukrainian, but also originally from Donbas. I lived in Donetsk under the occupation of Russian proxies for 8 years and moved to free Ukraine only a few months ago, before Russia attacked us.

Russian bots are trying to sow doubt in the minds of people from all over the world. They are saying that Ukraine subjected to genocide the people of Donbas. This is the official Kremlin’s agenda and a pretext for invading Ukraine, DON’T BELIEVE THIS LIE.

The only person who carried out the genocide of Ukrainians (including Donbas people) is Putin. Kremlin bots are saying that this issue is “very complex” and intricate. I’ll try to prove to you that this is not true, describing the events from 2014 to 2022 step by step. This is for people who really want to understand what’s going on in Ukraine.”

Where it all began

I personally miraculously avoided death at least twice because of Putin’s terrorists.

“There’s no gray area in this war”

Is it really that simple?

Sadly not. Of course NATO plays a big part in this scenario, and the U.S.A. as well, a part that just cannot be ignored. Yes, there are many, too many interests at stake. Power, money, pride, but it was expected that in 2022, Cold War wouldn’t bring the world on the verge of a nuclear apocalypse. Again. We all believed that the superpowers would fight economically, or politically. Instead Putin’s reaction to NATO provocations and expansion has been excessive, to put it mildly, to the point of being inhumane. And maybe we haven’t even seen all of it yet, because a man who shows so little respect for the lives of the people whose blood he thinks he shares, can do literally anything.

Again, whatever your stance towards the West and NATO may be, remember that to justify Putin’s actions in attacking Ukraine is to justify a soulless war criminal.

There’s no gray area in that.