Yeah it is.

the legitimacy/popularity of DPR LPR is pretty passé these days though, they’re gone and the political question is superceded by nato/eu

They took the heaviest casualties, and then were marginalized with the arrival of the main russian force. It was a double bind for them. But anyways, he implied that russia conjured the whole separatist thing up in the first place (donbass only became separatist in response to the nazification and increasing hostility by Ukraine).