politics

Even Western outlets like Human Rights Watch acknowledged the situation in Ukraine:

Flare-ups in hostilities, notably in March and May, led to civilian casualties. According to data by the United Nations human rights monitoring mission, in the first seven months of 2020, 18 civilians were killed and 89 injured by shelling, small arms weapons fire, mine-related incidents and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) strikes. Schools and educational facilities continued to be damaged by shelling, small arms and light weapons fire. Most of incidents occurred in the nongovernment-controlled areas.

...

Between January and May 2019, attacks on schools on both sides of the contact line tripled compared with the same period in 2018. Throughout six years of conflict, 147 children were killed.

...

Shelling across or near the contact line separating the two sides continued to damage civilian homes and infrastructure and to threaten civilian lives. Since 2014, 740 education facilities were damaged during the conflict, 16 from January to October 2018. Both sides carried out indiscriminate or deliberate attacks on schools and used them for military purposes.

...

In late January and early February, all sides to the conflict engaged in massive shelling of populated areas, severely damaging essential civilian infrastructure and killing civilians. According to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM), as of mid-November, at least 425 civilians were injured or killed in 2017, more than the previous year.

...

Although the September ceasefire largely held, sporadic fighting continued. Both sides violated the laws of war. They committed indiscriminate attacks that injured and killed civilians, including through the use of cluster munitions. Government forces and Russia-backed rebels deployed within or near densely populated areas, endangering civilians and civilian objects, including schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings.

...

Ukrainian government forces used cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city in early October 2014, Human Rights Watch said today. The use of cluster munitions in populated areas violates the laws of war due to the indiscriminate nature of the weapon and may amount to war crimes.

Don't forget the blatant abuse of the ethnic Russians in the area by the Ukrainian government.

In the first half of 2020, government policies linking pension eligibility with displaced persons’ status continued to discriminate against and create hardship for older people living in nongovernment-controlled areas by forcing them to regularly travel across the line of contact to access their pensions. In February, parliament failed to pass legislation that would have addressed this linkage on the premise that the state budget could not cover the cost of arrears owed to these pensioners.

...

Ukraine authorities required people entering from nongovernment-controlled areas to install a smartphone app to monitor compliance with restrictions, even though many people do not own a smartphone. They also require people to self-isolate for 14 days, which is prohibitively expensive for older people living in these areas.

...

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) continued to deny the secret and prolonged detention of 18 civilians in its Kharkiv secret detention facility from 2014 to 2016. All 18 were unofficially freed by the end of 2016 and their detention was never acknowledged.

...

The Ukrainian government continued restrictions on freedom of expression, freedom of information, and media freedom, seeking to justify them by citing the need to counter Russia’s military aggression in eastern Ukraine and anti-Ukraine propaganda. According to the Institute for Mass Information, a media freedom watchdog, as of October, 201 press freedom violations took place in 23 regions. These ranged from threats and intimidation to restricting journalists’ access to information.

...

In August, SBU officials in the Dnipropetrovsk region unlawfully detained and tortured Daria Mastikasheva, later charging her with treason for allegedly working as a Russian agent. At time of writing, no one was found responsible for Mastikasheva’s ill-treatment.

...

Kiev’s forces disappeared and arbitrarily detained 13 journalists, often accusing them of assisting insurgents. For example, in May, security services detained two Russian reporters and held them for a week in incommunicado detention for suspected assistance to insurgents. The reporters later alleged they were beaten and threatened with execution.

This is all coming from Western, allegedly Anerican-biased sources. Not acknowledging the situation in Ukraine between 2014 and 2022 is silly.

Ah yes, because everything must be Russian disinformation because it disagrees with government line.

A good idea before you start smugly bloviating about the dastardly Russkies is to not immediately out yourself as a credulous rube that believes whatever the government tells you.