In recent interviews published by American independent media organization RAIR Foundation, residents of the separatist regions recognized as independent republics by Russian President Vladimir Putin last month discuss suffering PTSD due to repeated attacks from the Ukrainian military over the past 8 years.

"It all started around June 2014, when we decided to separate from Ukraine. So they started shelling us… mornings and nights," one woman recalls.

"My husband and I went to vote in the referendum," she continues. "We were walking there while they were shooting at us, under artillery shelling."

An older woman agrees, saying she remembers seeing leaflets telling residents to the leave the area around the same time.

"They were dropping leaflets on us in 2014 saying we should leave immediately, take ourselves and get off the land because it does not belong to us," she says. "They don't need the people who live here; they want our land and our coal, but they don't need the people."

Footage in the video purports to show Donbas residents digging through the rubble of a demolished building searching for survivors.

"Ukraine was shooting at us," an interviewee recalled realizing. "They hate us."

She continued: "When they started bombing us, killing children, women and the elderly, I understood that they hate us, even though we didn't do anything to them; we didn't start a war against them. They started it."