Russia’s recent actions suggest an apparent shift to redirect its military efforts towards the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.
But what is the Donbass and how significant is its role in the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine?
The events of 2014 are crucial to the current situation. At that time, Russian-backed rebels seized government buildings in eastern Ukraine’s towns and cities. Intense fighting has left parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, in the Donbass region, in the hands of Russian-backed separatists.
Russia also annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, in a move that sparked global condemnation.
The separatist-controlled areas in Donbass became known as Luhansk and the Donetsk People’s Republic, but the Ukrainian government in Kiev claims that both regions are actually occupied by the Russians. Self-declared republics are not recognized by any government except Russia and its close ally Syria.
The Ukrainian government refuses to speak directly to any of the breakaway republics.
The language surrounding conflict is heavily politicized. The Ukrainian government calls the separatist forces “invaders” and “occupiers”. Russian media calls the separatist forces “militias” and maintains that they are locals defending themselves against the Kiev government.
More than 14,000 people died in the conflict in Donbass between 2014 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022. Ukraine said 1.5 million people were forced to flee their homes during that period, with the majority remaining in the areas of Donbass that were still under Ukrainian control and around 200,000 resettled in the wider Kiev region.
The separatists in Donbass have had substantial support from Moscow, with the US, NATO and Ukrainian officials saying the Russian government provides the separatists with advisory and intelligence support as well as incorporating its own officers into the rebel ranks.
Moscow has also distributed hundreds of thousands of Russian passports to people in Donbass in recent years. Prior to the invasion, Western officials and observers accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to establish facts by naturalizing Ukrainians as Russian citizens, a way of de facto recognizing breakaway states.
Putin has long accused Ukraine of violating the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine, and in the weeks before the invasion he claimed that a “genocide” was being committed in Donbass.
As in 2014, the region is once again at the center of the military and geopolitical conflict.
Source: CNN Brasil
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