Original: Novorossiya Today
Translated by Alexander Fedotov / Edited by @GBabeuf

Laurent Brayard: I was in Donetsk and I Accuse the French Government

I was incredibly lucky to visit for a few days Donbass and Donetsk itself. Thus, I have fulfilled the duty which essentially our government should be obliged to fulfill. Being very limited in my means, with the great support of the people of Donetsk (and not only them), I was able to see firsthand what is happening in this part of Europe which everybody is talking about but which no Frenchman is able to find on a map. I travelled thousands of kilometres to get there, and now I can accuse the French government with greater strength and more right. To remain silent would be criminal—it would be to disgrace my name as a Frenchman. The French Government, I accuse you that you are indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in the Donbass, that you contribute to the hardship and terrible living conditions of its people; I accuse you of involvement in the promotion of deceitful, unjust, dirty and outrageous propaganda, whose victims were millions of people. I accuse you of betraying our French traditions—derived not only from the French Revolution but also from the Ancien Régime—the purpose of which are to support and protect the weak and free them from oppression. Exactly how thousands of national volunteers in year II of the Republican calendar marched across all the Europe to win their own and other peoples’ freedom.

I accuse you, the Government of France, of renouncing independence by throwing her into the gutter called the European Union; I accuse you of no longer using the rights and responsibilities of “the voice of France”, the voice which charges our authorities to use diplomacy and our influence in the world for good purposes, independently and outside foreign spheres of influence which are contrary to the interests of the Nation. I accuse you, the French Government, of lying to the French people through criminal mass propaganda, which for many months in every possible manner undermines and slings mud at the reputation of Russia. This dangerous Russophobic policy, bordering on racial hatred and nationalism, is so terrible for our country that we refused to participate alongside our Russian brothers in the Moscow parade on the occasion of Great Victory Day of May 9, 1945, the victory over Nazism. Meanwhile, we support the Kiev regime, based on neo-Nazis and have already paid it, via the European Union, billions of euros at the expense of French taxpayers. Those funds have gone towards arming and equipping battalions of murderers and rapists, like Azov and Aidar.

I accuse you, the French Government together with all, or almost all, journalists in our country, of participating in a monstrous lie, from which people are dying in the Donbass: this—the myth of Russian Army aggression in Ukraine. I was in Donbass, I drove in there through two checkpoints Novoshakhtinsk and Matveyev Kurgan. If there were 50,000 Russian soldiers over there, as alleged by pro-Ukrainian activists such as the immoral Nathalie Pasternak, whose hands are now stained with blood; if there really were entire divisions, I would certainly have seen hundreds of tanks, trucks, service and supply units. Yet I did not notice any accumulation of Russian troops on the border, hiding whom would be extremely difficult in a region where the landscape consists mainly of Cossack steppe. During the trip, I saw neither soldiers nor regiments nor brigades nor divisions nor the army of the Russian Federation. Everywhere I went, in the cities through which I passed, such as the Cossack city of Antrasit with 54,000 residents, south of Lugansk, I did not encounter any Russian troops. I was able to interview the locals I encountered, and all of them, including those who do not support Novorossiya (and I did come across such people), said that there is no Russian Army in the Donbass. I myself was able personally to confirm this, as throughout the trip I met only republican army soldiers, dressed and armed very diversely.

Later, I will talk about what exactly I saw and heard in the Donbass. For the French Government it would be enough to send a single diplomat, only as an observer, so that they could ascertain the facts, present an objective report to our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and, through it, to the President of the Republic. But our government did not do this, on the contrary, it persists in accusing Russia. In the Donbass I met ordinary people, young and not so young, men and women, the elderly and children. Yes, this is a Russophone people, which wants only one thing: to gain its freedom. It has already made its choice in the referendum in favour of independence. It has already hoisted the banner of freedom over Donetsk and Lugansk. This population is to some extent supported by Russia, which hosts, without any external support, 1.7 million refugees while France—the country of Human Rights—has spent not a centime to help these people suffering disaster. On the contrary, it is pointing fingers at Russia and subjecting her to undeserved sanctions. While people in the Donbass suffer and die. Without the tremendous solidarity of the people in the Donbass, thousands of them would have already died; many of them, soldiers and civilians, will die yet. They will die simply because they want to be free, to shape their own destiny, to live.

Therefore, I call, exclusively in their own name—what I also would do at any cost: persecution or prison—on all the French, regardless of origin, skin colour, or political beliefs, to sanction the French government by expressing their resistance in the elections, and not just passive resistance, and finally to rise from their knees. The people of Donbass have shown us an example. In exactly the same way we can get rid of a presidential regime in which we are ruled by well-fed and complacent oligarchs. We can push them out of the country peacefully because, in the words of Danton, the people’s strength is boundless. Only one spark will suffice for France to return power to its people, to again put Democracy back in its hands, because lies and the rewriting of history have never receive any support in France, especially when people are dying under bombardment and even from lack of medicines and food.

I have made up my mind. Just as the French Ambassador in 1939 in Prague, asked for Czech citizenship as German divisions were crossing the borders of the country, I ask for citizenship of the Donbass. I prefer to share the fate of these brave men, rather than to remain silent and, with this silence, to support politicians who daily disgrace not only themselves, but even France herself.

—Laurent Brayard, journalist, French citizen