Thread by @dpatrikarakos

As Putin recognises the LNR & DNR "Republics" I repost some photos I took when all this began back in 2014 as Russian backed forces seized cities across the east.

Things began in earnest in Donetsk when protestors stormed municipal buildings & began waving Russian flags etc.

In those early days, even though it was clear that something organized wes behind it all, the people were a mix of local thugs and kids and so on.

It was a real mix - but clearly all the flags and slogan and banners were ready

It was a lot of thuggish behaviour. They had ripped up paving slabs to lob at anyone who came to stop them.

Over the next few days, they began to increasingly fortify what they had seized.

Not that for all the talk of a huge uprising of support for Russia in Dontest there were never more than several hundred people gathered there at any one time.

Already the tropes were in full effect. Ukraine was full of Nazis. Kyiv was a "fascist junta." Ukrainian politicians were endlessly daubed with Swastikas.

Then word came in that similar things were happening in Luhansk, another major city of the Donbas. Arriving there it was clear an MO was now established. Seize a central building; fortify it; adorn it with the appropriate paraphernalia...

And so on...

But something new was starting too...Among the general assortment of thugs and misfits and weirdos I started to see armed men dressed like soldiers; try to *act* like soldiers.

Inside that building, I saw huddles of armed men planning They were on radios etc. people elsewhere were giving them orders...

Amidst the guns and thugs and quasi-soldiers something else was emerging.

And so began one of the weirdest press conferences I ever seen...

And so the birth of the People's Republic of Luhansk was announced...

While the (often quite short) men with guns stood by...

Then it was to Sloviansk where the central police station was seized.

This is when the Donbas turned from civil strife into war in everything but name.

Over the next few months Russia seized total control of the 'separatist' areas. Donetsk now had to listen to 'separatist leaders' giving speeches from podiums with their own security details.

Now Putin has officially recognised these areas as independent. Pray for the people of Ukraine.