Why Donbas is once again at the heart of the war in Ukraine

RUSSIA HAS changed its goals in Ukraine. After invading on February 24th, its troops quickly advanced on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. But poor organisation and strong Ukrainian resistance held them up. They have since retreated, and Russia says its war aim is now to “liberate” Donbas, a region in eastern Ukraine. On February 18th Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said that Russia’s renewed assault on the region had begun.

The Donbas region comprises Donetsk and Luhansk, two provinces in eastern Ukraine. Roughly one-third of it has been controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014, but since the war began in February Russian troops have taken a lot more, including some of Mariupol, a port city. Why does Russia want to control the region?

The trouble in Donbas dates back to the “Maidan Revolution” in February 2014, when Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s Russian-backed president, fled from Kyiv after months of street protests. Russia responded by annexing Crimea, in the south, in March. In April, hostilities erupted in eastern Ukraine, where a patchwork of poorly co-ordinated militias began seizing government buildings throughout Donetsk and Luhansk. These groups, which were almost entirely composed of disgruntled locals and sympathisers from elsewhere in Ukraine, declared independence in May 2014 as the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. Together, the would-be statelets regarded themselves as “Novorossiya” (New Russia)—a revived term for southern Ukrainian territory conquered by the Russian empire in the 18th century.

Ukrainian forces went on the offensive, and appeared poised to retake the separatist-held territories. But Russian reinforcements rolled in from across the border, knocking the Ukrainians back. A hasty peace deal between Ukraine, Russia and the separatists halted the onslaught. But this agreement, known as Minsk I, soon broke down, and by January 2015 full-scale fighting had broken out again. Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and France’s president, François Hollande, stepped in to revive the ceasefire, brokering a “Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements”, known as Minsk II.

That left large swathes of Donbas under the separatists’ control. A 500km “line of contact”, bristling with trenches and landmines, cut through the region. Despite the presence of foreign observers to monitor the ceasefire, Donbas was never entirely quiet: more than 14,000 people were killed there between 2014 and 2021. In February, on the eve of the invasion, Mr Putin recognised the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent entities. The “republics” are full of newly minted Russian citizens. Russia has distributed hundreds of thousands of passports to residents of Donbas, many of whom voted last year in Russia’s parliamentary elections.

Now Russia has given up on taking all, or even most, of Ukraine, and re-focused on the east of the country. “It looks as though they’re going to frontally assault Ukrainian forces to steadily squeeze them out of Donbas,” says Michael Kofman of CNA, a think-tank. That would mean advancing south from Izyum, north from Mariupol and pressing in areas like Severodonetsk, where Ukrainian forces are trapped in a salient. The proximity of Donbas to the border means Russia’s air force should prove stronger than it was around Kyiv, and Ukrainian air defences patchier. But it must still contend with Ukrainian forces armed by the West. Mr Putin’s gamble is that he can wear down Ukraine’s army before his soldiers lose the will to fight.

Editor’s note (April 19th 2022): This article has been updated since it was published.

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