Jeff Monson said the project is close to completion

Former UFC fighter Jeff Monson has revealed that his film about the plight of the people of Donbass is close to being completed.

Monson, who was born in the US but was granted Russian citizenship in 2018, has accused the world of “forgetting” about the local population in the region as they suffered eight years of conflict with the regime in Kiev.

“The film is called ‘Eight Years Before’… It’s actually going to be finished at the end of the month… we’ve finished filming, we’re doing the editing, it’s almost finished, it’s two weeks away from being completely finished,” Monson told RIA Novosti.

“The whole object of this film is to show people, the whole world forgot about the people of Donbass.

“Everybody six months ago was saying, ‘Oh, Russia’s so bad, Russia’s invading Ukraine.’

“No, Russia came to save the people of Donbass. And people are like, ‘Where’s Donbass, where’s Donetsk?’ Nobody in the world, expect perhaps Russia, understood what was happening.”

Monson, 51, is a veteran of almost 90 professional MMA contests and has fought under the banner of promotions such as the UFC, Strikeforce, PRIDE, and Cage Warriors.

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His affinity with Russia, and in particular its Communist Party, has grown in recent years and Monson was granted citizenship by President Vladimir Putin four years ago.

Monson visited the war-torn Donbass in 2016 to give a series of master-classes and make trips to local schools and orphanages.

He has also pursued a political career in the city of Krasnogorsk just outside Moscow, while consistently speaking out against the policies pursued by the US government and its various foreign military campaigns down the years.

Speaking to Russian outlet Zvezda in August, Monson said he was working with a journalist friend to make the Donbass film, for which they had collected large amounts of testimony from the local population among an array of material.

Monson said he had lost close friends in the region as a result of Ukrainian shelling.