Luhansk People's Republic

[musique intrigante]

Je considère qu'il est nécessaire de prendre une décision qui se profile depuis longtemps : reconnaître immédiatement l'indépendance et la souveraineté de la République populaire de Donetsk et de la République populaire de Lougansk.

[musique intrigante]

Les accords de Minsk restent la seule base pour un règlement du conflit dans le Donbass.

PSB Bank operates in the Crimean Peninsula and in other Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia.

In 2023, PSB Bank completed the purchase of two banks owned by the DPR and LPR.

Thus, it is conducting transactions with the separatist groups in the Donbass region of Ukraine.

And for those who don't know, I think the DPR is the Donbass illegal government and the LPR is, I think, the Luhansk illegal government.

And I mean, overall, that certainly paints a picture.

And what's the ownership split in A7 between the PSB Bank and Elan Shaw? Well, evidence

Um, but I do think that there's a lot more that Western governments could be doing with their support to Ukraine to make sure that those people are supported because there is a hearts and minds element to this.

Um, and I think that was maybe sometimes overlooked by everybody, but not by the Russians, [laughs] um, in 2014 in places like, you know, the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic.

And I worry that sometimes it gets overlooked now as well, um- But yeah, that's obviously I've said that very cautiously because at no point do I want to criticize really the Ukrainian side of this.

It's more my impression, like working on this area.

And, uh, uh, of course, uh, they hit the civilian infrastructure, but our engineering technologies are also rapidly growing, and we managed to find new solutions for securing our energy capabilities here in SMO zone.

Comparing to what is-- what was happening in summer, there is more petrol and more diesel, both on the highway, the M4 that is leading from Moscow to SMO zone, as well as in Lugansk People Republic and Donetsk People Republic is also, the situation is not so bad as it was before.

So technically, you know, as always, I'm, uh, slightly optimistic because I see that everyone's raising, raising their stocks in this game, and Russia is still coping and fulfilling the objectives of a military operation.

And well, thank God we've passed this electoral circle, uh, because every electoral circle is, of course, you know, is a stress test for the whole system.

But on the other side, Russia was never named in the agreement as a party with obligations.

And basically all the obligations on the other side that Russia was to implement, they pretended that these are those Luhansk and Donetsk republics who have to implement.

So they transferred all the responsibility for implementation of the agreement to those proxies.

who were not interested in implementing, and that was another way to block the whole process.

In the Krasnodar region, one polling station had to be moved after a drone attack shattered its windows.

In the Luhansk People's Republic, 14 polling stations were switched to backup power after drone attacks damaged power lines.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin also keeps attacking Ukraine, striking a passenger train on Friday.

Officials say at least one civilian is dead and eight others injured.

You know, I myself...

Actually, great example of this, look at the leadership of the DNR and the so-called DNR, LNR, the occupied Donbas, Donetsk People's Republic, and Lugansk People's Republic.

Uh, the guys were all working in, in, one guy was, uh, shining cars in a car wash.

The other guy was a security guard, maybe the manager.

Or will there eventually be this butting up against Russia and Ukraine?

You know, I think that's the situation that we had before the full-scale invasion of 2022, where you had these Russia-backed statelets called the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, which were kind of equivalents of the Transnistria region, self-proclaimed in Moldova and other unrecognized states around the periphery of Russia in the former Soviet Union.

And I think that status quo got broken by Russia itself when it rolled tanks across the border and decided that it wasn't happy having these entities that were fully controlled by Moscow but not recognized as part of Russia's territory within Russia.

They decided that they wanted to not only control them, not only integrate them into Russia, but control the rest of the Donbas and, in fact, control the rest of Ukraine.