Do Donetsk residents want to join Russia?

Question

Eva K. Bartlett has posted a YouTube video on Oct 1, 2022. It includes some interviews of residents of Donetsk, a city in Eastern Ukraine.

The interviewees express pro-Russian opinions.

Bartlett writes:

Given the predictable Western negation of the referendum to join Russia, and following having done many interviews with people during the referendum, yesterday I did some follow up interviews with Donetsk residents, asking their opinions on joining Russia

Bartlett implies that Donetsk citizens would like to be part of Russia.

Bartlett's Wikipedia page includes claims that she is a shill for Russia, and she may have cherry-picked her interviews, or people may have been pressured to express false views.

Is there good evidence that the people of Donetsk generally would prefer to be part of Russia than Ukraine?

Answer 1

Some of them certainly do. Even when phrased as broadly as "Ukraine should join Russia". These were the results of a poll conducted between 8-18 February 2014. That's about a month before Russian troops evicted the Ukrainian ones from Crimea, i.e. it was among the last polls conducted before there was open territorial conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

If I need to add this: last fall Russia conducted referendums on joining [it] in the territories it recently occupied. Official results were in the 99% ballpark, with turnout claimed above 95% as well.

According to the results released by the Russian Central Election Commission through its sections in the DPR and the LPR, 99.23% (2,116,800 voters) supported the annexation in Donetsk and 98.42% (1,636,302 voters) in Luhansk. The turnouts were 97.51% (2,131,207 voters) and 94.15% (1,662,607 voters), respectively.

Russia even claimed these were monitored by international observers, but that has been disputed because none of the usual organizations officially participated.

As for the present state of affairs, anybody not accepting Russian citizenship by next summer will be considered a foreigner, according to a recent decree (№ 307 of 27.04.2023) signed by Putin, and measures against these have been spelled out (in the same) to include everything up to deportation, so the Q might be be becoming tautological.

б) реализацию мер, исключающих применение административного выдворения за пределы Российской Федерации в форме принудительного выдворения за пределы Российской Федерации, депортации или реадмиссии при принятии решений о привлечении к административной ответственности лиц, названных в пункте 1 настоящего Указа, а до 1 июля 2024 г. в пунктах 2 и 9 настоящего Указа; - лиц, названных

в) с 1 января 2024 г. предоставление органами внутренних дел Российской Федерации на территориях Донецкой Народной Республики, Луганской Народной Республики, Запорожской области и Херсонской области государственных услуг в сфере миграции и реализацию функций этих органов на указанных территориях в полном объеме.

Ostensibly only those [foreigners] who "pose a threat to national security" are subject to such measures (by this decree), but given e.g. that holding a poster saying "no to war" is commonly interpreted as "discrediting the Russian army" by the Russian courts, it's anybody's guess how broadly this recent decree might be interpreted.

Answer 2

To quote @pinegulf,

It's almost certainly impossible to get accurate answer while there is active war going on

Having said that, the closest you can get to an answer is by looking at historical data of accurately recorded political division within the territory.

The most visual would of course be the presidential elections during the last 30 years, especially the final rounds with a pro-western and a pro-eastern candidate where you can clearly see the division. (And that would be pretty much every election over the last 30 years.)

Here's a notable example from 2010, where Yanukovich won, performing best exactly in Eastern Ukraine, followed by Southern Ukraine:

This doesn't say much specifically about wanting to join Russia, but it still does say a lot about where the blue-coloured regions are leaning.

(The reliable thing about past election results is there was no gunpoint, and while people can say anything they want on camera, they're anonymous in the booth where they cast their votes, so what they say there is what matters. Of course the elections can be tampered with, but not on that scale to where it gets decisive, I think.)

For those wanting to look into this further, here's the above expanded and looked at through time, going back to the 14th century: https://youtu.be/CJMO8D-Hhn8?t=1h20m05s. It's not in English, but it's at least a safe video, in the sense that there's 0% chance of it being labelled pro-Russian. It refers to not only that map, but many more maps, clearly showing the same pattern.