The Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine responded to statements made by the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, regarding the ‘damage’ allegedly inflicted by the Ukrainian army in Donbas and the border regions of Russia, amounting to over 706 billion rubles (about 9 billion dollars).
This is reported by Kyiv24
Manipulations Surrounding the Causes of Destruction in Donbas
The Center emphasizes that Russia is trying to evade responsibility for the destruction in Donbas by shifting the blame onto Ukraine. According to experts, the main manipulation in Bastrykin’s statements lies in the deliberate distortion of cause-and-effect relationships. They stress that prior to 2014, there were neither destructions nor casualties among the civilian population as a result of hostilities in Donbas.
“The key manipulation in this statement is the intentional erasure of the cause-and-effect relationship. Before 2014, there were no ‘damages from the Armed Forces of Ukraine’ in Donbas. There were no large-scale destructions or thousands of deaths. All of this appeared only after the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine.”
Russia Creates a ‘Pseudo-Legal Reality’
The Center believes that Russia is forming a ‘pseudo-legal reality’ in which it attempts to present itself as a victim while portraying Ukraine as guilty for the destruction. In this way, the aggressor seeks to shift responsibility for the consequences of its own aggression, as well as to justify the lack of reconstruction in the occupied territories, social issues, and the decline of the region.
The Center’s statement notes that such claims are part of the information preparation for the prolonged decline of the occupied territories. By shifting the responsibility for the destruction onto Ukraine, Russia attempts to explain the absence of reconstruction and the social collapse in the region.
Previously, the Investigative Committee of Russia disseminated Bastrykin’s statements in an interview with the Russian state agency TASS, where he again mentioned the ‘damage from the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,’ which allegedly exceeds 706 billion rubles.
At the same time, in December 2025, the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine estimated the environmental damage caused by Russian aggression at over 6 trillion hryvnias.