I used to really like DuckDuckGo but it joins the elite club of censoring.
The best way to fight disinformation and propaganda is to demistify it, argue it, present it and talk about it, analyse it and present the reality. This is not what DuckDuckGo seems to value. They would much rather down-rank searches from Russian media than let people forge their own opinions on the reality at hand.

A search engine taking party in a conflict is not just a political issue, but a poor sign that the search aspect only responds to what the owners of the engine want you to easily find rather than to leave you with an unfiltered list of what you are really looking for.

Currently, DuckDuckGo's search effectiveness on controversial topics now prove to be similar to that of Google's, with a little bit more privacy powdered onto it. Not exactly worth using anymore, and I certainly don't think they are trustworthy for quality searches if they do things like that.