Benoît Paré spent years in eastern Ukraine as an international monitor with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. That makes this unusually long conversation with Aaron Maté valuable even if you ultimately reject some of Paré’s conclusions.

Paré discusses what he says he witnessed between 2015 and 2022: shelling across the Donbas front, civilian casualties, Ukrainian volunteer battalions, attitudes among local residents, the failure of the Minsk agreements and the dramatic escalation immediately preceding Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. He also explains how he interpreted OSCE camera observations and ceasefire data, arguing that they complicate the familiar description of the invasion as simply “unprovoked.”

That distinction matters. The OSCE independently documented a sharp rise in ceasefire violations before Russia invaded, but its published totals did not establish that Ukraine initiated the escalation. Paré goes further, offering his own analysis of OSCE observations and accounts from former colleagues.

The Grayzone and Maté approach the Ukraine war from a strongly critical perspective toward NATO, the United States and the Ukrainian government, and the interview reflects that framing. Paré’s claims should therefore be treated as testimony and interpretation rather than as official OSCE findings.

That is also what makes the conversation worth encountering: it presents a first-hand perspective that can be compared against the documentary record rather than simply accepted or dismissed.