According to Militarymaps.info, the Ukrainian army has lost control over 95% of the Southern half of Donetsk oblast. Even some of the neighboring villages in the Zaporizhia oblast are under the threat of capture by the rebels.
Oh, as opposed to "have civilians who are rebels and wish to secede?" When you say "captured by," it sounds like the rebels are imposing what they want on the villages who may not even be interested in this fight. Kind of like how Muslim extremist rebels tend to capture villages in the Middle East.
If he is regular West-Ukrainian living in Ukraine, then he might just be brainwashed by the media there. I watched a selection Ukrainian TV for an hour, and, well, Goebbels is an innocent child by comparison. What is happening in MSM in Ukraine can be describes as a full-scale social-control experiment at a state level.
What makes you think that? What exactly makes you trust the media from other countries, more than the media of the country actually being attacked?