Operation Z is the Beginning of the End For Kiev’s Eight-Year War Against Donbass, US Volunteer Says

• Operation Z is the Beginning of the End For Kiev’s Eight-Year War Against Donbass, US Volunteer Says
  by Ekaterina Blinova, https://sputniknews.com/
  After eight years of their homes being shelled by the Ukrainian Army, Donbass inhabitants are hoping that Russia’s special operation will put an end to this conflict, says Russell Bonner Bentley, an American volunteer who was given the codename “Texas” after joining the Donbass militia in 2014.
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  “Since the special operation, I can tell you that in the major cities of the Donbass republics, Ukrainian shelling has increased significantly,” Bentley says. “They’re using Tochka-Us against our civilians. Now, the heavy shelling, particularly in my neighbourhood in the Petrovsky district (of Donetsk), people are being shelled at a rate they haven’t experienced since 2014 or 2015. And so it’s very hard.”
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  He notes that eight years of war “takes a toll on every single person from the soldier on the frontline to the little kid that was born in 2015, to the old babushka who is still just a pensioner and sitting on the front porch watching things develop.”
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  “The people of Donbass and the volunteers, first of all, understand that Operation Z was absolutely necessary,” the veteran says, referring to Russia’s special operation which was launched on 24 February.
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  He recalls that by February 2022 the Ukrainian army had amassed 150,000 troops on the Donbass front against 60,000 of the region’s defenders and that the Ukrainian military had prepared a major offensive against the major cities of Donbass – Donetsk, Gorlovka, Makeevka, and Lugansk.
  “At the end of February this year they were within just a few kilometers of the centre of these cities,” Bentley says, adding that if the Ukrainian army had been able to launch the offensive they would have broken through the Donbass defensive lines, and advanced swiftly into Donetsk’s centre.
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