The Independent Journalists and Resources in Donbass (with future updates)

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This post will be a sticky list pointing to the independent, critical thinking journalists, analysts and sources of information on the conflict in Eastern Ukraine / Donbass / Novorossia. These resources proved themselves to be reporting what they see on the ground and are not beholden to the NATO-agenda of the Western MSM. But before we proceed, here is a list of Telegram channels with the running news feeds:

Thanks to JMF in his comment to Another Western Truthspeaker – French Adrien Bocquet in a video interview for pointing me to more sources of information!

Some of the references below will point to the articles on RT or SputnikNews, both of which are censored and blocked in EU. To read those one would need to VPN to a county that still upholds the freedom of speech, like Singapore.

Graham Phillips is the British journalist and the one I’ve been following from the first days when Maidan turned violent, when the ukro-Nazi/NATO coup d’etat went through in Kiev, and when the first bombs were dropped on Lugansk by Kiev in 2014. UPDATE: on the 26th of June, the British government imposed sanctions on their own citizen, freezing his assets!

  • Telegram
  • Rumble
  • Odysee
  • Bitchute
  • YouTube – In July 2023 YouTube deplatformed Graham (the link now points to WebArchive snapshot), deleting many years of independent journalism from Donbass. Graham is currently re-creating the channel on Rumble.

Lada Ray is an excellent analyst, whom I’ve been following since 2014. Her special methodology and deep knowledge of the subject allows her to make accurate predictions of the future developments. Lada Ray can be found on:

Patrick Lancaster is an American journalist and former military. He’s been covering the conflict since the earliest days. His reportages can be found on:

Scott Ritter is a retired Marine Intelligence Officer with an intimate knowledge of the international law, military intel handling, Russian language and Russian way of thinking, and an American patriot. I find his analytical works to be always honest, unbiased, and well-argumented. Scott Ritter can be found on Telegram, where he posts links to interviews and articles on other resources. In August 2023 YouTube deleted Scott Ritter’s accounts, so he is now publishing to Rumble. His Scott Ritter Extra channel is also on Rumble.

Alina Lipp is a German independent journalist. I posted a retranslation of her article in one of my previous posts: The trickle of truth from Donbass thanks to more international independent journalists. Some of her reportages can be found on YouTube, though i did not find her channel per se. What i found, though, is that the German MSM have mounted a strong smearing campaign against, calling her “Putin’s information war warrior”, for her unbiased showing what she sees around her. She is being persecuted and a criminal case has been opened against her for speaking the truth. Read more in Alina Lipp – the new “White Rose” of Germany. Independent journalist may face 3 years behind bars for speaking the truth. Here is Alina’s interview to Redovka.world

Alina is being subjected to a systematic and expensive character assasination and smearing campaigns in the German media. She conducted her own investigation, finding the regularities and the cost of that (over €7000 per month). The rusults can be read in her Telegram posts here and here.

Alina can be reached on:

As an example, here is Melitopol’s Mayor telling Alina Lipp about the Mayor’s views on German propaganda and deliveries of armaments:

Johnny Miller is a British journalist reporting from Donbass. One can follow his reports on his Telegram channel. Several of his reportages can be read on PressTV web site.

Here is a re-post on Alina Lipp’s Telegram channel of Johnny Miller’s short interview of a relative of a 6-year-old girl. killed in Ukrainian sheiling of Makeevka. The woman telling that “this child was born during the war and the war took it away.”


Russell Bentley is an American freelance journalists and eye witness who’s been in the thick of the events right from the start in 2014!

UPDATE 19.04.2024: It is with great sadness I update this entry, noting that the legend of Donbass, Russel Bentley, has been killed.

In a comment to this post Russell provided additional information about his work:

I have also written for Fort Russ News, The Greanville Post, Russia Insider. and many others.. Youtube deleted my channel recently, after 12 years, with 21,000 subscribers. I have been deleted/blocked by Twitter (2016) Paypal (2017) IndieGoGo (2018) Facebook (2019).
I also write and film for Russian TV channels RT, Russia 1, NTV and TsargradTV, as well as multiple local DPR TV channels and publications. Most, if not all of these media are blocked and censored in the West. Currently, my main (and only) social media channels are Telegram and Vkontakt

A series of videos “Donbass with Texas” can be found at AltCensored. They were published by Essence of Time International YouTube channel, who got “freedomofspeeched” by YouTube after the 22nd of June 2022, and can now be found on Rumble with just a few films.

Here are some links to Russell’s reportages

Russell Bonner Bentley, a 61-year old American from Texas, says he couldn’t stop himself from coming to the rescue of the people of Donbass, as they confronted fascism just like their great-grandfathers did 80 years ago. First as a soldier and now as a war correspondent, Bentley is defending the land where he wants to stay for the rest of his life.

A few quotes from Sputnik International>

“You know, it’s like the old joke about the guy who asked the Ukrainian general, why don’t you attack Donbass? And he says, because the Russians are there. And then he says, well, why don’t you attack Crimea? And he says, because the Russians are really there,” Bentley notes.
…
“They [Ukrainian army] used human shields. That’s not just a tactic, it is one of their strategies,” Bentley says. “They’re hiding behind their own civilians in fact, and it’s truly cowardly, it’s truly treacherous, it’s truly dastardly.”
…
The people in Donetsk City and the Donetsk People’s Republic are filled with joy to meet the Russians, says Bentley.

“I mean, this marks the beginning of the end of the war, and it’s been a long war for everybody here,” the war correspondent notes. “You know, eight years is twice as long as the Second World War, and it’s been horrific, the whole time here.”
…
“Once you’re dealing with real Nazis, it’s like a mad dog or a poisonous snake,” Bentley says. “There’s no way to appeal to compassion or justice or humanity. Nazism is a disease. And there’s only one way to cure it, and we’re getting ready to cure it right here in Ukraine permanently.”
…
However, the last straw was the story of Inna Kukurudza, a Donbass resident, who lost both of her legs and died from injuries during the Ukrainian air strike on Lugansk Regional State Administration on 2 June 2014.

“There was a video made in the aftermath of that airstrike,” Bentley recalls. “She was sitting on the street, in a pool of blood, next to her legs, both of her legs had been blown off by the rockets… And there was a photograph made from that video of her sitting on the ground looking straight up into the camera. And when I saw that photo, I knew for sure I was coming here.”
…
“We’ve brought in more than a hundred thousand dollars from US and Western donors for human aid here,” Bentley says. “We work mainly with kids, kindergartens, orphanages, churches. We’ve repaired a lot of homes that got bombed by Ukrainian artillery.”

Vittorio Rangeloni is an Italian journalist and blogger. I became aware of him in an English-language interview to Readovka.world: Most Italians not aware civilians dying in Donbass.

His work can be found on his Telegram channel.

John Mark Dougan is an American blogger who went to Novorossia to see what is happening there with his own eyes, and, expectedly, found the truth to be different from the MSM narrative. It seems there is a smear campaign going on against him in the West. Kiev recently “acknowledged” his contribution in spreading the truth by putting him on the death list:

Vanessa Beeley is a British frontline journalist and truthspeaker with reports from Syria and Ukraine. Her reportages can be found on:


Read more about Rob Amos’ image above in a post by Daniel Wirt.

Eva K. Bartlett is a dual Canadian and US citizenship freelance journalist reporting from the ground in Donbass. Her YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/c/EvaKBartlett

I reposted one of her reports published on Rt earlier: Independent Western journalists uncover Ukrainian fakes in an upwind battle. Eva K. Bartlett’s reports.

As of a few days ago one of her YouTube channel was deleted, a rough capture of the channel can be seen through the WebArchive!

Eva K. Bartlett’s blog is called In Gaza. I also found her Telegram channel. As she wrote in its bio: “The social media purges are starting, so here’s my own channel where I’ll post realities I find insightful”

Dean O’Brien is a British freelance photographer reporting from Donbass. He posts updates on his Telegram channel

Anne-Laure Bonnel is a French journalists and film-maker, who held a speech at the UN. (Thank you, Kate, for pointing me to her in the comment!) Anna-Laure can be found on:

Several examples of her passionate reports and speeches on YouTube:

Sonja van den Ende is a Dutch journalist in Donbass. She asked some uncomfortable questions at the UN Security Council summit, as detailed in this article on SputkikNews: Journo: Is It Coincidence That Some CIA Torture Techniques are so Popular With Ukrainian Neo-Nazis?

“I participated in the UN Security Council Arria-Formula meeting on 6 May 2022”, says Sonja van den Ende, an independent journalist from Rotterdam, Netherlands. “The goal of this meeting was to present to the United Nations (UN) members evidence about war crimes committed by the Ukrainian Army in cooperation with the Azov Battalion which was provided by us, journalists on the ground, in Donbass. The evidence was presented in the form of videos and oral testimonies, from residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, especially Mariupol, Volnovakha and Melitiopol”.

Another article based on her materials: Dutch Journo: ‘We are Here, in Donbass, to Awaken Westerners Deluded by MSM Propaganda’

“They lie continuously about everything just to implement their own agenda,” van den Ende. “Like in Syria, President Assad was ‘the murderer’ and now President Putin is ‘the butcher.’ They had used this script for many years in Iraq, Venezuela and [other] countries which don’t comply with their agenda; they need a bad “guy”. But they (media) are not even there on the ground, they can’t judge. Only a handful of journalists from the West are here: Graham Philips, Patrick Lancaster, Anne-Laure Bonnel and me.”

…

“The majority of the people whom I spoke with were very happy that the [Russian special] operation has started,” the Dutch journalist says. “Of course, nobody wants violence and war, but they have been suffering already eight years from the war, carnage and destruction by the Ukrainian forces. The worst were the Nazi battalions, who were fighting along with the regular army.”

Three more articles by Sonja van der Ende:

Brian Berletic heads the News Atlas Channel where he posts analytics and news. Here is one article of his on the New Eastern Outlook news site.

Mehmet Perinçek is a Turkish historian who went to Donbass to see what is going on there with his own eyes. His videos can be found on his Youtube channel. I posted a retranslation of his article in one of my previous posts: The trickle of truth from Donbass thanks to more international independent journalists.

Adrien Bocquet is a French volunteer who went to help as a medic to the Ukrainian side. What he saw created a strong dissonance to what he thought he would be helping with. Upon return to France, he could not stay silent. I wrote about him in Another Western Truthspeaker – French Adrien Bocquet in a video interview, where you can also find the links if you want to search for his other interviews.

Steve Sweeney, the editor of the British Morning Star went as a journalist to to Kiev and that trip starkly changed his perspective.

British media ‘whitewashing’ Ukrainian neo-Nazis, UK journalist tells RT

Sweeney, who recently returned from the city of Lviv near the border with Poland, said he had to travel there himself because “the British media reporting [on Ukraine] is now incredibly restricted.”

“You have the Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the BBC, Sky News, Channel 4 all really producing identical reports from Kiev and Lviv that don’t deviate at all from the government line, from the NATO line on what’s happening” in Ukraine’s conflict with Russia, he said.

“A great effort is being made to really whitewash or rehabilitate the [Neo-Nazi] Azov [military battalion] as either having no influence in Ukraine or being just simply misunderstood nationalists,” the journalist pointed out.

Stephen James Humberd

Ramiro Gomez is a member of the Brigade Ruben Ruiz Ibarruri- Anti-Fascist Caravan of Banda Bassotti came as a volunteer to Donbass

The Hypocrisy of a Leftist “No to War” that Comes Too Late and the original article in Spanish: La hipocresía de un “No a la guerra” que llega muy tarde

UPDATE August 2022: I moved Gonzalo Lira’s entry to the bottom of the list as he is highly likely compromised after the arrest by the SBU. This is an opinion voiced by Scott Ritter, whom I hold in high esteem when it comes to the strategic analysis.

Gonzalo Lira is a American-Costa Rican journalist, who was staying in Kharkov in the early days of the conflict. He was attempted silenced by the SBU, but was released after quite a lot of international noise was made after his disappearance from the internet channels. Gonzalo Lira continues to post on his Telegram channel. His two YouTube channels are still on-line and the videos there are intact, but Gonzalo stopped producing any new reportages there after the threats of the Ukrainian Gestapo, aka SBU.

UPDATE: Gonzalo Lira’s material are available through Patrick Lancaster’s Rubmle channel – the Gonzalo Lira Series, for example:

https://rumble.com/embed/v16dh46/?pub=10pam3

Prior materials related to his works on my blog:

Gonzalo Lira’s interview of Scott Ritter:

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10 thoughts on “The Independent Journalists and Resources in Donbass (with future updates)”

  1. Thanks for including my work with CAM in this list. I have also written for
    Fort Russ News, The Greanville Post, Russia Insider. and many others.. Youtube deleted my channel recently, after 12 years, with 21,000 subscribers. I have been deleted/blocked by Twitter (2016) Paypal (2017) IndieGoGo (2018) Facebook (2019).
    I also write and film for Russian TV channels RT, Russia 1, NTV and TsargradTV, as well as multiple local DPR TV channels and publications. Most, if not all of these media are blocked and censored in the West. Currently, my main (and only) social media channels are Telegram and Vkontakt –

    Telegram – https://t.me/TXDPR
    Vkontakt – https://vk.com/donbasstexac

    Please add the above links if you can. Thanks.
    TexaZ

  2. Thank you for your work, Sir!
    I have updated the post with the additional info that you provided.
    Those who seek will always find (“Кто ищет, всегда найдёт”), so the blocking can be circumvented using VPN which has an exit point in a country which still upholds the freedom of speech principle. In my case, I VPN to Singapore!

  3. Updated Gonzalo Lira’s and Patrick Lancaster’s entries with their Telegram channel links.

  4. Stanislav:

    Great, extremely comprehensive list! Truth is indeed hard to come by these days, and it’s a joy to have such an extensive reference at hand.

    As for my own humble contribution, you’re entirely welcome.

    Sorry I missed this at first; life has been “getting in the way” somewhat recently.

  5. I know what you mean about life getting in the way… I hoped to make more translations and follow the events more closely as well… But at times it gets too overwhelming, so it’s important to pick my battles, so to speak.

    Added today entries for John Mark Dougan and Vanessa Beeley to this list.

  6. Pingback: Alina Lipp – the new “White Rose” of Germany. Independent journalist may face 3 years behind bars for speaking the truth | Nemo's Realms

  9. Added the Italian journalist Vittorio Rangeloni to the list. Also added more Telegram news channels and a link to another interview with the persecuted German journalist Alina Lipp.

  10. Added reference to the British journalist Johnny Miller, updated Alina Lipp’s segment with a link to her website and the details about the smear campaign directed at her.

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