DISINFO: Ukrainian nationalists are fighting in Donbas with local residents
SUMMARY
Ukrainian nationalists are not fighting the Russian Federation army in Donbas, as Kyiv claims, but with local residents, many of whom are citizens of the Russian Federation.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the war in Ukraine, attempting to portray it as a civil war.
The war in eastern Ukraine is not a civil conflict, but an act of aggression by the Russian armed forces, that has continued since February 2014. The European Union stated in July 2014 that "arms and fighters continue flowing into Ukraine from the Russian Federation".
After the EU-Ukraine Summit HR/VP Josep Borrell said: "We fully support the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine. We will not recognise the illegal annexation of Crimea and we call on the full implementation of the Minsk agreements."
At the NATO Summit in Wales in September 2014, and at successive summits since then, allied leaders demanded that Russia refrain from aggressive actions against Ukraine and stop fomenting tension along and across the Ukrainian border.
According to the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Russian special forces and troops operated to mobilise, lead, equip and support separatist militias in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine from spring 2014 to the present, although their presence was denied by Moscow.