Strategic Culture reports:

[https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/09/19/war-has-never-been-what-it-seems-the-testimony-of-benoit-pare/]

Benoît Paré is a courageous former French official and OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) observer who worked in eastern Ukraine and Donbass between 2015 and 2022...

Paré’s testimony paints a very different picture from that often portrayed in the West, because the conflict in Donbass before 2022 was not simply a case of “unprovoked Russian aggression,” but a protracted and sporadic low-intensity war in which the Ukrainian army also had offensive strategies and in which the civilian population of the separatist areas paid a very high price. These realities were considered ‘sensitive’ and rarely published in official reports or reported by Western journalists, who mainly frequented the Ukrainian side. It was only with the large-scale operation in February 2022 that international media and political attention exploded, but by then the previous dynamics had already been largely removed or ignored.

FNN encourages you to read his book What I Saw in Ukraine and judge for yourself.