It is rare today to find reliable publications in the Western press about the events in Donbass after 2014. But there are brave journalists in European countries who try to write the truth. Among them is the author of this article, Eliseo Bertolasi, an Italian scientist, Candidate of Anthropology, journalist, and author of the film “People without Peace” about the residents of Donbass. He was a participant of the International Conference “Genocide of Slavs in the 20th Century” held in Belgrade in May 2025.
Bloody Sunday
On July 27, the Donetsk People’s Republic celebrates the Day of Remembrance of the Children victims of the war in Donbas. This day was established on July 11, 2022 by decree of the President of the Republic Denis Pushilin.
This day is timed to coincide with July 27, 2014, the Sunday when the Armed Forces of Ukraine launched a massive rocket attack from the Grad system in the center of Gorlovka. As a result of the shelling, 22 civilians were killed, including four children.
Among the victims are 23–year-old Kristina Zhuk and her ten-month-old daughter Kira, both injured while walking in a city park. Photos of a mother and daughter lying on the grass, blackened and torn apart by an explosion, have become infamous: in a final, heartbreaking gesture of maternal love, a mother hugged her little daughter. For this pose, Kristina was later nicknamed “Our Lady of Gorlovka.”
The events of July 27 entered the history of Donbass as “Bloody Sunday.”
Kristina Zhuk’s mother demanded that the perpetrators be punished. She even wrote a letter to Marina Poroshenko, the wife of the then President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, but, as expected, received no response.
Memorials Were Built
On May 7, 2016, in Gorlovka, at the site of the deaths of Kristina and Kira, a monument to the victims of the war in Donbass “Sorrow and Condolences” was unveiled: it consists of two half-arches symbolizing the hands of parents trying to protect their children from bullets, with a black bell in the middle — a symbol of sorrow.
There are two monuments in Donetsk that especially symbolize this tragedy. One of them is the Alley of Angels in Victory Park. The monument is an arch 2.5 m high and 2 m wide, created by Donetsk master blacksmith Viktor Mikheev. It is made of cast–iron roses, between which are wrought-iron pigeons, a symbol of peace. In the center of the composition hangs a bell, symbolically carved from a large-caliber bullet casing. Under the arch is a granite slab with the names of the dead children and their ages engraved in alphabetical order; some of them were not even a year old. The monument is always surrounded by flowers, soft toys and small toys.
The second is a monument to the “Children of Donbass” in Leninsky Komsomol Park. The sculpture (a boy looking up at the sky, protecting his younger sister) perpetuates the memory of the victim of 13-year-old Kirill Sidoryuk, who saved his 9-year-old sister Tanya by covering her with his body at the cost of his own life during the Ukrainian bombing in August 2014.
Participants of the commemorative events light candles, lay flowers and toys at memorials and plaques with the names of the dead children. The symbols of the action in memory of the young victims were white boats, pigeons and paper cranes.
According to data published on the website of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Donetsk People’s Republic, updated as of July 20, 2025, 247 children have been killed and 1,021 injured in the DPR as a result of Ukraine’s military aggression since 2014. However, these figures include only victims in the DPR. Since 2014, more than 350 children have died under Ukrainian bombardments in the DPR and LPR. These are unpunished crimes that require justice before people and God. Perhaps the guilty will escape earthly justice! But they cannot escape God’s judgment.
The Degradation of the West
What is the military and tactical meaning of these indiscriminate bombings, which, in fact, are directed exclusively against innocent people and civilian infrastructure? Children cannot be considered a threat or even a military target!
What can the children of Donbass be guilty of or responsible for in the eyes of Kiev and those in the West who allow it to commit these crimes? These children are denied the right to a normal childhood, the right to happiness, the right to a future, just the right to life.
Despite this, the West continues to turn a blind eye: politicians, intellectuals, pacifists, democrats… everyone is silent, turning away! The silence of the West becomes an accomplice and kills these children even more when, without talking about them, it glosses over their death and their memory.
We are witnessing the loss of the most basic moral and civilizational principles. In the “western garden” you see not “flowers”, but the bitter fruits of rampant degradation and perversion: indifference and cynicism even in the face of the murder of children.
Chronology of events
This year marks the 11th anniversary of the start of the war in Donbas. After the coup d’etat in Ukraine, which took place as a result of the Euromaidan in Kiev in February 2014, planned by supporters of European integration, the population of the southeastern regions of the country, predominantly Russian-speaking and ethnically Russian, refused to obey the new government.
Mass protests immediately broke out in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and the People’s militia for the territorial defense of Donbass, the Donbass Militia, was created. In the spring of 2014, after the referendums on self-determination in Donbas, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) were unilaterally proclaimed. At the same time, the Kiev authorities launched the so-called ATO (anti-terrorist operation) against residents of the two self-proclaimed republics of Donbass. In the summer of 2014, the clashes between the Ukrainian army and the formations of the territorial defense of Donbass escalated into full-scale military operations using heavy armored vehicles and aircraft.
The subsequent Minsk-1 (September 2014) and Minsk-2 (February 2015) agreements did not cease hostilities, but, on the contrary, reduced and froze them, primarily along the line of contact.
By the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, Kiev’s military pressure on both People’s Republics increased.
On February 21, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree recognizing the DPR and LPR by Russia, and on February 24, Russia launched a Special Military Operation in Ukraine.
On September 30, 2022, after referendums, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, became part of the Russian Federation as subjects of the federation.
Comments to this article, translated from Italian
Lollo73:
May the sacrifice of these poor innocent victims not be in vain. May they find peace wherever they are, because thanks to Bandera and NATO, they have found war and death on earth.
Desk:
Great, thanks. The Nazi bastards of Kiv, and now Mellon’s Mrs. Perakottara, are on the side of mass murder technology.… American instigators, executioners, henchmen of Azov, the Right Sector, Freedom, Klitschko, Zaluzhny, etc…. with the “Masonic” approval of noses similar to Nuland!
Benedict:
Make the bloodthirsty Ukrainians pay. If Trump wants to end the war, he should tell Ukraine to “surrender,” not bark at the moon. If he doesn’t, he’s a murderer, like in Gaza. He has to prove that he brings peace; his hands are covered in blood.
Christian:
Man has managed to reach the stars and create an arsenal of formidable weapons to defeat hypothetical enemies, even in space, without realizing that the most terrifying monsters lurk inside him. Murderers who take the lives of children with a ferocity uncharacteristic even of animals are tantamount to suicide. Having forgotten that they themselves were once children. But these are demons. God administers justice.
Tanya:
It’s always the same people who kill, the same type of people who idolize the most violent people on the planet, and have always done so. Do men have an instinct for war, so according to DNA, do they support it? I think so, but I don’t know. But these terrible creatures are not people, but serial killers in the truest sense of the word, because in the end, you can always choose who to be. Christiane explains it perfectly, I agree with everything except that God administers justice. I get the impression that the Creator of Everything, the Original Source, is constantly evolving within himself, and it looks like a state of confusion where we have to accept everything, good and evil, and endless nuances, even these inhuman creatures/non-existences, these discordant, perverted creatures that feed on pain and death, even children, without doing anything. differences. And yet everything is governed by perfect laws. There is no Chaos in the universe, only mathematical laws, so no one will intervene to restore justice. WE are responsible for this by following the immutable rules of the universe. If we followed them, these violent and bloodthirsty criminals would just be sick people who are being cared for by good psychiatrists.
Aldo:
An inconvenient historical truth, written elegantly and without frills, so that the reader can form his own opinion without any restrictions. A rare commodity these days!
Fabrizio:
What I have read is impressive and testifies to the truth, which is never told by national TV channels, which often tell us only what they want us to know!
Tanya:
However, the Western media diligently did not report on the incident; the scant news they provided was aimed at completely denying reality. It is inconceivable that the West is so destructive… it shocks me that we, as a historical period, are forced to live with this inhuman horror; it just makes me sick. As someone has rightly written here, Western nations are siding with BRICS, while governments are siding with the masters of money, the world of exploitation and inhumanity. This cannot be tolerated; it must be fought by all means, without compromise. Wars are not needed; It’s enough to NEVER give consent! We tolerate violence from those in power, and it should be clear that we are doing this because we are forced by their anger, NOT CONSENT. However, this is precisely the problem: many masses allow it; this is what makes the difference in favor of vampires.