Ukraine before 2022: a French journalist documented a war barely visible in the West

The documentary DONBASS, by French journalist Anne Laure Bonnel, portrays in 2016 a war already underway in eastern Ukraine: the conflict that began in 2014 had left more than 10,000 dead and remained far from Western media attention until the Russian invasion of 2022.

## A documentary about the Donbas of 2016
The armed conflict in the **Donbas** began in 2014. After the change of power in **Kyiv**, the situation in eastern Ukraine escalated. Pro-Russian militias and Ukrainian government troops clashed in a war that claimed more than **10,000** lives in the years that trinc.

French journalist **Anne Laure Bonnel** had already documented it. In 2015 she was reporting on the Donbas; her film is called **DONBASS**. The documentary by **Anne Laure Bonnel** portrays Ukraine in **2016**: a divided Donbas, an ongoing war and a civilian population caught between Ukrainian armed forces and pro-Russian militias.

That film shows destroyed houses, frightened civilians, the wounded and people who had been living between front lines for years. Bonnel picks up exactly where the conflict left off.

## Poroshenko's warning in Odessa
On 14 November 2014, the then Ukrainian president, **Petro Poroshenko**, gave a speech in **Odessa**. There he made clear how deeply divided the country was. The east, controlled by separatists, was becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of Ukraine.

That isolation did not begin with the Russian invasion of 2022. It took shape in the months after the change of power in **Kyiv**, when armed confrontation became entrenched in the Donbas. The war was visible to anyone who looked east. But few Western media outlets were looking.

The extensive prime-time coverage never came. The major Western newsrooms never made the Donbas a central issue.

## Eight years that stayed out of frame
Between 2014 and 2022, the Donbas endured eight years of war. More than **10,000** people died in that period. The civilian population bore the brunt of the fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian militias.

Bonnel's documentary served as a reminder that the war in Ukraine had an earlier history. But her work did not reach the European public at that time. After the Russian invasion of **2022**, the new war inevitably dominated news coverage.

As a result, the eight-year war that preceded it in the Donbas and the experiences of the local population increasingly disappeared from view. Understanding why the Donbas was already one of Europe's most dangerous conflict zones requires looking at those years.