Ireland’s Russian speaking community speak out
Members of Ireland’s Russian speaking community have contacted Lawyers For Justice Ireland to highlight their cause of the plight of the people of Donbass. They held a recent protest near to the Ukrainian Embassy in Dublin and made the following statement:
“We are the people of Donbass, tired of the war that has lasted on our land for 8 years. We are the ones that society does not want to notice. The war in Ukraine did not start on February 24, it has been going on for a long time. We took to the streets of Dublin already in 2014. In our homeland, we are called separatists just because we want to speak Russian.
Everyone is talking about the war in Ukraine. But for some reason, everyone is silent about the fact that Donbass is also Ukraine.
And it turns out that all this time Ukraine has been shooting at its citizens.
We gathered at the Embassy of Ukraine, the country where our loved ones live now, with a demand to stop bombing our own citizens.
We want to talk about numbers. About those that the press is silent about. For example, that since February 17, 2022, 256 civilians, including 16 children, have been killed in the DPR republic, 2,699 people have been injured, including 176 children.
During the escalation of the conflict, 5,983 cases of shelling of the territory of the Donetsk Republic were recorded, 49,886 ammunition was fired, including 31 missiles from the Tochka-U OTRK, 14 missiles from the Smerch, 151 missiles from the Hurricane and 8759 missiles from the Grad.
All of Europe says that Russian troops are shooting towards Ukraine. But for some reason, no one thought about the fact that missiles were also flying from Ukraine. And they explode on the territory of Donbass, hitting not military facilities, but civilians.
We were looking forward to the results of the ceasefire negotiations. But we have no more hope. We are tired of being afraid.
We went to the Embassy of Ukraine to remind them of the children of Donbass they killed. Those whose names are carved in stone on the Alley of Angels in Donetsk. They have 141 children.
We believe that the war will only end when both sides stop firing. This means that Ukraine must cease fire and sit down at the negotiating table.
We want peace!”