Eastern Ukraine is on edge after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Donbas after recognizing the independence of two pro-Russian breakaway territories in the region.
Analysts say this could be the start of a broader conflict in the country, and many officials are calling the move a threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Conflict isn’t new to the Donbas region. For almost eight years, it has been the site of a low-intensity war between Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces that has killed more than 14,000 people.
But Putin’s decision on Monday sharply amplifies concerns about Moscow’s intentions in the region.
WHAT’S THE RECENT HISTORY IN DONBAS?
War broke out in 2014 after Russian-backed rebels seized government buildings in towns and cities across eastern Ukraine. Intense fighting left portions of the Donbas region’s eastern Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts 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 Donbas became known as the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Ukrainian government in Kyiv asserts the two regions are in effect Russian-occupied. The self-declared republics are not recognized by any government, other than Russia. The Ukrainian government refuses to talk directly with either separatist republic.
The Minsk II agreement of 2015 led to a shaky ceasefire agreement, and the conflict settled into static warfare along the Line of Contact that separates the Ukrainian government and separatist-controlled areas. The Minsk Agreements (named after the capital of Belarus where they were concluded) ban heavy weapons near the Line of Contact.
Language around the conflict is heavily politicized. The Ukrainian government calls separatist forces "invaders" and "occupiers." Russian media calls separatist forces "militias" and maintains that they are locals defending themselves against the Kyiv government.
More than 14,000 people have died in the conflict in Donbas since 2014. Ukraine says 1.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes, with most staying in the areas of Donbas that remain under Ukrainian control and about 200,000 resettling in the wider Kyiv region.
HOW HAS PUTIN STOKED THE CONFLICT?
The separatists in Donbas have had substantial backing from Moscow. Russia has long maintained that it has no soldiers on the ground there, but U.S., NATO and Ukrainian officials say the Russian government supplies the separatists, provides them with advisory support and intelligence, and embeds its own officers in their ranks.
Moscow has also distributed hundreds of thousands of Russian passports to people in Donbas in recent years. Western officials and observers have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of attempting to establish facts on the ground by naturalizing Ukrainians as Russian citizens, a de facto way of recognizing the breakaway states. It also gives him a reason to intervene in Ukraine.
And last week, the Russian parliament recommended that the Kremlin formally recognize parts of the LPR and DPR as an independent states, another escalation in rhetoric that U.S. officials said at the time demonstrated that Putin has no intention of abiding by the Minsk agreement.
Speaking last Wednesday, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Ukraine would "not stop until we free our territories in Donbas, Crimea, until Russia pays for all the damage it caused in Ukraine.
"Putin has long accused Ukraine of violating the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine, and has said it was within Russia’s rights to militarily intervene to protect them.
Last Wednesday, Putin alleged that "genocide" was being committed in Donbas. His allegations aren’t new, but the timing was of concern to Western policy-makers, who feared a repeat of a 2008 conflict in Georgia.
xjmtzywBy invoking genocide, Putin was echoing Russia’s false claim that Georgia committed genocide against civilians in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia in August 2008. During that brief conflict, Russia launched a massive military incursion that pushed deep into Georgian territory.
As it was in 2014, the Donbas region is now the crucible of the conflict between east and west, between Putin’s drive to reassert control — weakening the Ukrainian state — and the growing aspiration of Ukrainians to join the fold of European democracies.
RELATED IMAGESview larger image
A pro-Russian serviceman is seen within advanced trenches in Donetsk in the Yasne village area, Donbas, Ukraine on February 11. (Svetlana Kisileva/Abaca/Sip/AP)
