The Lugansk People’s Republic living through the Donbass war
‘At the beginning, we didn’t want to separate from Ukraine. We wanted to be a subject of Ukraine. To be a Ukrainian republic,’ says Sergey of the Lugansk People’s Republic militia. He has been in the militia for eight years, from the moment he understood the Maidan coup, which led to a change in the Ukrainian government, was threatening the lives of all Russian-speaking people.
In 2014 the new Ukrainian government announced there was no place for Russian-speaking people in the country. The Lugansk and Donetsk regions asked for federalisation as they did not want to accept the new legislation. Ukrainian nationalists answered with bullets and shellings. That was the moment when the Donbass war started.
Today the Lugansk People’s Republic is finally recognised as an independent state by the Russian Federation. Follow the eight years Lugansk spent defending its independence in the new documentary