At minute 27 in the following illuminating interview (video below) with U.S. Colonel Douglas MacGregor, journalist Aaron Maté  asks …

“Do you think Russia made a sufficient effort to do all it could to avoid the use of force?”

MacGregor replies:

“Well, I know that there are large numbers of Russians living in towns and villages in the Donbas who said that they were on the verge of being exterminated by members of the Azov regiment when Russian troops and tanks arrived just in the nick of time to save them from being gunned down in their town and Village burned.”