How russia is trying to evade responsibility for the devastated Donbas
In russia, they have claimed about “damages from the Armed Forces” in Donbas and in the border regions of russia amounting to over 706 billion rubles (about $9 billion). Such figures were announced by the head of the investigative committee of russia, alexander bastrykin.
The key manipulation in this statement is the deliberate erasure of the causal relationship. Before 2014, there were no “damages from the Armed Forces” in Donbas. There were no large-scale destructions and thousands of people killed. All of this appeared only after the invasion of russian troops into Ukraine.
russia is creating a pseudo-legal reality in which the aggressor supposedly turns into a “victim”. kremlin is trying to bill Ukraine for the consequences of its own armed aggression.
Such statements indicate that russia is conducting an information preparation for a prolonged decline of the occupied territories. By shifting responsibility for large-scale destructions to Ukraine, russia justifies the lack of reconstruction, social collapse, and general degradation of the region
