DONETSK, December 24. /TASS/. Before the start of the special military operation the Donetsk People's Republic returned 879 of its supporters, who had been repressed in Ukraine with almost all of them subjected to various types of violence, DPR Commissioner for Human Rights Darya Morozova said.
Earlier, in an interview with TASS, Russia’s Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova said that she had almost 500 appeals from people who were repressed in Ukraine for their pro-Russian views, including priests, human rights defenders and journalists.
"Before the start of the special military operation on, as part of the work of the humanitarian subgroup of the Contact Group in Minsk, we managed to bring 879 DPR supporters home from Ukraine. Almost all of them were subjected to torture, beatings and psychological violence," Morozova told TASS.
She said that the Kiev regime began repressions for pro-Russian views in 2014. The first formal step towards this after a coup in Kiev was the repeal of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law on the protection of regional languages, including Russian, followed by the prohibition of the communist ideology and equating the USSR to Nazi Germany.
"However, we all know perfectly well who exactly it is against. Not a single person has been convicted for the ideology of Nazism in Ukraine since 2014, while the number of grandmothers and grandfathers imprisoned for wearing St. George's ribbons is in the thousands," the ombudsman added.
According to her, these actions caused outrage among people "whose history, culture, language and freedom were deliberately and systematically violated." During the Russian Spring, Crimea separated from Ukraine, and the DPR and LPR declared independence. "Subsequently, persecution of our supporters, sympathizers, as well as any forces that advocated implementation of the Minsk agreements and the advent of a just peace began. After that, the persecution of the canonical church and the seizure of churches began," concluded Morozova.