I'm not saying it, I am linking to a Wiki page which includes information about it. Fair enough to try to investigate the claims more but you do seem to just try to find things which show Russia in a good light. Regarding the incident in Horlivka, the only info I could find with a Google search came from Russian sources. In all wars there is propaganda and spin put on incidents. Do you recognise that? Do you recognise that claims of attacks over the past 10 years could be spin to justify the invasion? I'm not saying they are inaccurate - I don't know - but you seem to just accept the Russian claims regardless. Why?
I would like to say I am neutral - I totally accept that Russia has committed many war crimes. However, AFU attacks on civilians in Donbas started long before 2022, during the time before Russia got heavily involved. It began when the Eastern Ukrainians refused to accept the new government after the Maidan protests and riots: that government was not democratically elected. They wanted to remain part of Ukraine, but also wanted to maintain the military neutrality that Ukraine had had since its independence from the Soviet Union. So they declared independence, and formed militia to defend against the new regime. Russia sent them weapons to enable them to do this, while at the same time recognizing the Poroshenko government in Kiev.
The Minsk Agreements were supposed to result in the Donbas being an autonomous region of Ukraine. The Separatist militia only needed about 10,000 combat-ready troops for defensive purposes, because the Minsk agreements were meant to prevent offensives. For that reason they didn't mobilize more than that number.
There came a point in November 2021 when they suspected that Kiev was not intending to keep to the agreements, and were ultimately intending to retake Donbas. Kiev denied this, but we now know, from Merkel and Hollande, that France and Germany secretly intended the agreements to allow Kiev time to build up its military. I've seen a document online, outlining the reasons why Ukraine wanted to prepare for conflict with Russia. Their objective appears to have been to deter Russia from attacking. It could be that they were actually preparing to retake Donbas and Crimea, and anticipating a Russian response.
In November 2021 the separatists appealed to Russia to send 30,000 troops to help defend against a potential AFU offensive. They did this because they didn't have enough troops ready in case of such an offensive. Again, this is because, with the Minsk agreements in place, they only needed 10,000 troops to keep the front line stable.
At the same time, Russia was trying to get security guarantees from the West; the Biden administration refused these and as I recall, NATO carried out massive exercises near Russia's borders. This led to Russia massing over 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border, whose purpose was to secure the autonomy of Donbas and to install a pro-Russian government in Kiev.
So the tipping point appears to have been the breakdown of the Minsk agreements, at which point the Separatists realized that resuming of the conflict was inevitable, and their appeal to Russia for help because they were not prepared for the coming AFU offensive. Notably, the Russians had told the Separatists that they would not occupy the territories. But the Separatists said that this would lead to the AFU coming back in again, and asked the Russians to keep troops there.
On the subject of cluster ammunition, I read that Ukraine had a lot of this left over from Soviet times, which it had started destroying. Last year it had almost run out of shells altogether: does that suggest that it had used up those old cluster rounds? And also, Russia being a more powerful country, of course it is going to use more of a type of weapon than Ukraine, whether artillery or whatever.
I hope that sounds at least a little bit unbiased?
