RECOGNITION of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as independent states is essential to avoid a massacre in Donbass, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) has reiterated.

After several rounds of discussions, Russia’s lower house voted on Tuesday evening in favour of a motion brought by the communists to recognise the breakaway states.

It passed with 351 lawmakers voting in favour, 16 opposing and just one abstention. The CPRF said that the move was necessary to protect the security of Russian nationals in the Donbass region.

“In recent weeks, the situation around Ukraine has sharply worsened. Accusations are pouring in of Russia’s intention to act as an occupier. 

“In fact, the reason for the crisis is that the Washington puppet masters of the Kiev leadership and [former fascist leader Stepan] Bandera’s formations are persistently trying to organise a massacre in the Donbass,” party leader Gennady Zyuganov said.

Russian forces near the Ukrainian border do not exceed 100,000, he said, saying that Ukraine has amassed some 125,000 troops in the Donbass region alone.

Mr Zyuganov accused Western media outlets of failing to report these numbers.

“For the sake of solving their geopolitical problems, they are ready to arrange another large-scale bloodshed,” he said.

Moscow said that it was pulling back some of its soldiers from the border area, having completed military exercises and scotched US intelligence reports that claimed Russia was to invade today.

But Western officials moved swiftly to say there was no evidence of such a withdrawal as they continued to issue threats and warnings to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Zyuganov said that the Ukrainian troop build-up, which has been bolstered by British-trained fascist forces, were signs Kiev was preparing an offensive against the people’s republics.

He slammed the West’s reliance on reactionary forces in the region, whose predecessors he said were directly responsible for the genocide of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians.

“It was their punitive detachments that carried out the wildest massacres against the population of the partisan regions of Belarus, burning alive the inhabitants of hundreds of villages. 

“Today, this nefarious force, with its aggressive Russophobia and anti-semitism, is welcomed by Western politicians,” he said.

“American globalists set the task not to protect Ukraine, but to crawl out of the acute crisis of capitalism,” Mr Zyuganov said.

“It is extremely important for them to get new benefits by torpedoing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and hooking the EU economy on the needle of their expensive liquefied gas. This is the true background of the current military crisis around Ukraine.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov however said that Lugansk and Donetsk had forfeited the right to independence by signing the 2015 Minsk Accords.

The agreement would see the self-declared republics reintegrated into Ukraine but with greater autonomy.

But the CPRF leader said both Kiev and Western countries had trampled all over the Minsk Accords and urged Russia to prevent a bloodbath in Donetsk and Lugansk.