Baloney. It is well over 10k. And OSCE has indeed confirmed it. The war started because the coup leaders were smart enough to know they didn’t want surly Svoboda handing around Kiev.
But glad the Donbass was saved from the nazis....again.
Just as a starting point, in 2021 OSCE reported 16 fatalities. Most of them resulted from civilians accidentally setting off unexploded ordnance or mines.
"Overall, including the above-mentioned cases, the Mission has corroborated 91 civilian casualties that occurred in 2021, including 16 fatalities and 75 injured injuries (60 men, 18 women, eight boys and five girls). Of these casualties, 36 were due to shelling, 12 due to small-arms fire and 43 due to mines, unexploded ordnance and other explosive objects."
During the period from 2017 to 2020 the OSCE found that there were 161 civilian fatalities as a result of the conflict in the Donbass area. Of those people 66 died from shelling, most died from accidents with unexploded ordnance and mines.
During the entire length of the fighting before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, from 2014 to the end of 2021, a total of 3,404 civilians were killed. That total includes the nearly 300 people killed when the Russians shot down a civilian Malaysian airplane. Many of the 3.404 civilians that were killed where not present on either the LNR, or the DNR's territory, and many were killed by Russian, LNR, or DNR artillery, mines, and gunfire.
"During the entire conflict period, from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021, OHCHR recorded a total of 3,106 conflict-related civilian deaths (1,852 men, 1,072 women, 102 boys, 50 girls, and 30 adults whose sex is unknown). Taking into account the 298 deaths on board Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on 17 July 2014, the total death toll of the conflict on civilians has reached at least 3,404. The number of injured civilians is estimated to exceed 7,000.>"
The estimated losses among members of the Ukrainian military and the LNR and DNR militias is about 10,500 people. Of those 4,400 are members of the Ukrainian forces, and 6,500 are members of the various LNR and DPR militias involved in the combat.
There is no basis in reality to claim the "well over 10k" people were killed by the Ukrainian military. And all the stories about thousands of civilians in the Donbass dying due to Ukrainian shelling are nonsense. Civilians suffered from shelling from both sides, but the DPR, LNR, and their Russian allies did most of the shelling. You can't blame the Ukrainians for the deaths caused by gunfire and shelling done by the DPR, LNR, and Russian soldiers.