In the sad litany of Donbass martyrs, here is the story of Diana Prokofevna Nikiforova, a resident of the Liman region, born in 1941. Like the vast majority of the population of the surrounding area, she had participated in the May 2014 referendum, which was organized throughout Donbass and met with immense popular fervor. The issue was simple, the proclamation of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the separation of Ukraine, which had gone mad after the American Maidan revolution. She never thought things would turn out the way they did, with Kiev sending in troops and retaliatory battalions, assassinations, massacres and war. Born during the Second World War in the midst of the occupation by Nazi Germany, this child of the Donbass was reliving the same events more than 70 years later. Her determination to be Russian, having experienced the golden age of the USSR, was not weakened, even after she was arrested by the SBU political police and tortured.

Diana, 74, tortured and beaten for three hours by the SBU