Why the Donetsk and Lugansk regions interest Putin: the keys to the conflict in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk, the Ukrainian regions occupied by pro-Russian separatists, marks a crucial step in geopolitical tensions that escalated a few months ago, when the US warned of a possible invasion of Russia. Ukraine.

Putin yesterday confirmed his plans to Europe. Russian-backed separatists in those two regions, known as Donbass, broke from Ukrainian government control in 2014 and proclaimed themselves independent “people’s republics” but have no such international recognition. This uprising coincided in time with the annexation of Crimea by Russia, also in 2014. Another open wound that led last summer to 46 States and organizations such as NATO to create the Crimean Platform to ask Russia to return the peninsula to Ukraine.

Since 2014 Ukraine estimates that some 15,000 people have died in fighting in Donbass (despite the ceasefire) and has left 1.4 million displaced in the country. Russia has repeatedly denied being part of the conflict, but has allegedly backed the separatists in numerous ways, with covert military supportfinancial aid, supplies of vaccines against covid-19 or the issuance of at least 800,000 Russian passports for residents.

Yesterday’s announcement by Putin with the consequent dispatch of troops (“peacekeeping forces”) is made based on the argument that Russia is intervening in an ally to protect them against Ukraine and supposes a drastic turn in the situation and opens the doors to a military conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Why this interest in those two regions?

The separatists control about a third of the provinces and have given them the names of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR). In the past, they were the industrial heart of Ukraine. Its closeness to Russia can be seen in the population, a large part of which is Russian-speaking.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is seeking to boost economic growth and curb corruption. NATO membership is on his roadmap, although German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has acknowledged that Ukraine’s membership is not on the agenda. Following Putin’s announcement, Zelensky has indicated that he will study the possibility of a rupture of diplomatic relations with Russia.

Russia’s plans are different: it wants Donetsk and Lugansk to obtain autonomy that will give them a effective veto on western integration supported by a sizeable majority of the country’s 41 million people.

Moscow has always denied having plans to invade Ukraine but the US has been warning for weeks that the attack would be imminent due to the deployment of around 190,000 Russian soldiers on the borders.

The Minsk Agreements, called to fail

Now, the Russian recognition explodes the 2014-15 Minsk peace agreements that, although they have not yet been implemented, were seen by all the parties to the conflict, including Moscow, as the best opportunity to seek a solution. These agreements require, on the part of Russia, a high degree of autonomy for the two regions within Ukraine.

The one in Minsk was called to be the action plan with which to return normality to Donbass. The main objective of the agreements was to achieve a ceasefire, for which it stipulated a dozen points that included the withdrawal of heavy weapons and an exchange of prisoners between the parties. In fact, the first signature was signed in September 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, by Ukraine and Russia, by the rebel administrations and by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), but the plan did not stop the fighting.

Five months later, they were reissued, this time including France and Germany as signatories. Thus, the parties signed a 13-point plan in February 2015 that includes the withdrawal of weapons, the deployment of OSCE observers, the holding of local elections and the granting of a specific status for the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Russia is a taboo term in this new document; the name of this country does not appear at any time, despite the fact that its veiled participation in the conflict has been one of the main points of friction between Kiev and Moscow during these almost eight years of war.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed this Tuesday in statements to the Russian television network Russia 24 what the Minsk Agreements “have been buried for more than a year” for Kiev’s “sabotage” of the compromises. “It is not us who buried them,” she said, before assuring that Ukraine “forces” its Western partners to share or “swallow in silence” their “Russophobia.”

It already happened with Georgia in 2008

This is not the first time that Russia has recognized the independence of breakaway regions. It has already done so with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in Georgia, after waging a brief war against that country in 2008. modus operandi from Moscow was similar; he also provided them with extensive budget support, extended Russian citizenship to their populations, and sent thousands of troops to the area.

In the case of Georgia, Russia used recognition of breakaway regions to justify an unlimited military presence in a neighboring former Soviet republic in an attempt to thwart Georgia’s NATO aspirations by denying him full control of his own territory. The current scheme is similar.

Finalizing the sanctions

Western governments have been warning Moscow for months that any movement of military forces across the border with Ukraine would provoke a strong response, including strict financial penalties. Among them, surveillance of its billionaires, additional restrictions on sovereign debt, interruption of the ability of lenders to use dollars or the blocking of the new natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2built to bring gas from Russia to Germany but has been paralyzed by the German government.

According to the high representative for EU Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, the European Union will make a decision on the sanctions on Tuesday afternoon. European sources have indicated to Eph that the sanctions “will be directed both entities and individualsamong which “there will undoubtedly be Russian entities and individuals.”

The European restrictions will also focus “on a certain number of activities located in the Donbass that are very directly linked to Russian interests,” they added.