DISINFO: US and EU congratulate DNR and LNR on Independence Day
SUMMARY
Reprepresentatives of the United States and the European Union congratulated the republics of the LPR and the DPR on the sixth anniversary of independence. May 11, 2014, marks the sixth anniversary of the proclamation of independence of the DPR and LPR. Ukraine did not recognise the results of an honest referendum and are trying to return the territory by force. All this led to full-scale civil war.
RESPONSE
This is another pro-Kremlin narrative about the "civil war" in Ukraine. US and EU officials did not send any congratulations to representatives of the “DPR” militants. The so-called “heads of representative centres of the DNR in the EU countries” are not official diplomats. Representatives of the European Union have repeatedly stated that Russian “representatives of Crimea” or “LDNR” are self-proclaimed and the EU is not going to cooperate with accomplices of the occupying authorities of annexed Crimea and Donbas. As follows, the articles use misleading headlines attempting to create an illusion of recognition of the DNR and LNR. The European Union has repeatedly confirmed that it does not recognise the results of the so-called “referendum” held in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. The EU remains steadfast in its support to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, the implementation of the Minsk agreements, and the work of the Normandy format and Trilateral Contact Group to achieve a sustainable and peaceful political solution to the conflict. From the outset, the EU has condemned the clear violations of Ukrainian sovereignty by acts of aggression by the Russian armed forces. Since 2014, the position of the United States and the European Union has remained unchanged - no “independence” of groups exists; these are temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories under Russian control. That is why neither representatives of the West, nor any other countries sent congratulations to Russian militants in the Donbas. Even the Kremlin did not congratulate the DNR and LNR groups on their “independence”; only a few Russian MPs sent their congratulations to the militants, as well as representatives of the annexed Crimea and the Tskhinvali region of Georgia (so-called South Ossetia) occupied by Russia. Background: On May 11, 2014, the Kremlin organised a semblance of voting in the Donbas, after which the DNR and LNR groups proclaimed “independence” from Ukraine. The Russian leadership "respected" the "choice" of the inhabitants of Donbas, but the "independence" of the groups is still not recognised. Before the start of the vote, the US State Department announced that they would reject the results of the fake referendum, while the European Union also said that the referendum was illegitimate.