In 2014, the population of the areas of the Donbas later occupied by Russia was just under four million.


When Russia invaded, approximately 1.6 million people fled to unoccupied Ukraine. That's according to the International Organization for Migration.

https://www.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl486/files/situation_reports/file/IOM-Ukraine-IDP-Assistance-Report-November-2015.pdf

Several hundred thousand more people from Donbas fled to Russia or to third countries.

Now, according to the Russian government, the population of the occupied regions of Donbas is ... just under four million.
https://www.dsnews.ua/static/longread/donbas-eng/demography-of-ordlo.html#:~:text=The%20results%20of%20those%20calculations%20are%20presented%20in%20the%20table.&text=According%20to%20the%20above%20data,which%20are%20now%20under%20occupation.
How is that possible?

Did the people who left return?

No.

Russia paid people from Russia to move to the region.


So when you hear "Ukraine is attacking its own people in Donbas" the truth is "Ukrainians, many of them originally from Donbas, are attacking Russians who knowingly moved to the area Russia illegally invaded and occupied." (Addendum 1, the majority of the pre-2015 residents of Donbas who stayed were pensioners. See even before the invasion, Russia was offering citizenship to Donbas residents and pensions to those citizens who were eligible. Since at the Russian pensions were several times higher than Ukrainian pensions, many older people accepted this offer so, you know, they could afford to heat their apartments and eat something besides groats and potatoes not out of any love for Putin or Russia.) (Addendum 2: This is also, by the way, why the Minsk Agreements never went anywhere. Russia wanted the referendum on autonomy to include all current Donbas residents regardless of how long they'd been resident and exclude all the former residents expelled by the Russians. They also wanted the separatist "governments" to oversee the referendum without any Ukrainian or international observers.)

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