Reigniting the Civil War in Donbas: Reminiscence of the Crimean Annexation

Europe has been the stage of calamity since the yesteryear’s shenanigans stirred by regional powers and political deadlocks. Coupled with the havoc subjected by the covid pandemic, the region continues to struggle with a health emergency laced with economic turmoil. Focusing on Eastern Europe, Belarus was the centre of attention following the rigged general election in August ensuing mass protests in capital of Minsk. However, while the internal conflict raging throughout the country posed instability, the region was never near an escalation as severe as the turn of events at the borders of Ukraine.

As the Pro-Russian factions are gripping in Eastern Ukraine, primarily in the region of Donbas, Ukraine fears a repeated episode of the War of Donbas of 2014 when the Russian intervention and subsequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in the south resulted in chaos and heavy casualty in the echelons of the Ukrainian military. While the Russian administration continues to veil its position by explicitly denying any inducement of the Pro-Russian voices in Eastern Ukraine, the sinister momentum is continually picking pace with heavy movements of Russian troops along the border of Donbas in the east and Crimea in the south. The timing and placement allude to a significantly graver possibility extrapolating from the notorious annexation not even a decade earlier.

Ukraine is an East European country bordered by Belarus to the North, Hungary, and Poland to the adjoining West, and Romania to the South. The Southern periphery is lined by the Black Sea while Russia stretches the borders in the North and Northeast. The region is scattered with the post-Soviet rendition of Eastern Europe: the countries conflicting and colluding which once stood as the mighty Soviet Union of the 20th century. Albeit Ukraine functioned as the pillar of the Soviet’s flourishing economy throughout the yester century, the country as an independent nation has been at an impasse, unlike its regional counterparts.

Unlike the ex-Soviet nations of Latvia and Lithuania, which incline towards the Western alliance and exist as one of the 30 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Ukraine struggles with a bifurcation of factions: one aligning with the European Union (EU) and the United States whilst the other jumping the bandwagon of Russia. While the former faction advocates joining hands with major Western powers, the latter opposes the active involvement of NATO in Ukraine, pushing for a Russian-backed government instead. This divide led to the annexation of Crimea in the South: marking Russia as an ever-looming threat to the sovereignty of the ex-Soviet countries deviating from the objectives of the Kremlin.

In 2014, mass demonstrations against the Pro-Russian Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, led to a dramatic turn of events. The revolution erupted in defiance to the abysmal economic policies of President Yanukovych that quickly erupted into an anti-Russian narrative bustling the streets of the capital city of Kyiv. While the President repeatedly tried to resolve the economic disparity by factoring in his alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his acts were perceived in the light of deception, especially by the Pro-European faction in Ukraine. The rage-fuelled protests eventually managed to topple the government of President Yanukovych, forcing him to step down and flee into exile to Russia. The falling-out of the Russian narrative, however, did not bode well in the echelons of the Kremlin.

In the months following the ousting of President Yanukovych, Russia started to tighten the screws against the surging opposition in Ukraine. While the primary objective was to reinstate the government of President Yanukovych, President Putin had other views. Quoting to his cabinet members, he stated: “We [Russia] must start working on returning Crimea to Russia”. Within days, Russia started to implement its scheme by systematically provoking the Pro-Russian rebels against their Pro-European counterparts.  Russia supported the rebels in East Ukraine as well as Crimea in the South to take over the state infrastructure and grapple for power to induce chaos.

Once the mayhem was too hard to follow, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula whilst blocking the Eastern Ukrainian territory to impede any Western assistance to the Ukrainian military. The EU slammed sanctions over the Russian oil and banking sectors, the US warned of dire consequences and the UN denounced the invasion as an act of ‘Barbarianism’. However, it didn’t hinder the annexation of Crimea: separating it as the ‘Republic of Crimea’ before eventually signing a treaty of accession to incorporate the peninsula as a part of the Russian Federation. Despite the unabating US and UN allegations of war crimes and subsequent sanctions whilst deeming the annexation as ‘Illegitimate’, Russia controls the Crimean Peninsula except for the northern areas of Arabat spit and Syvash which still fall under the contested control of Ukraine.

Unlike Crimea, however, the Donbas region gives way to a different story altogether. Though an identical Pro-Russian sentiment follows through both Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the foresight differs significantly. A 2014 referendum in Russia casted a colossal 96.7% voter count in support of subsuming Crimea as a part of the Russian Federation: which ultimately led to the accession of the Crimean Peninsula to Russia despite the UN deeming the vote illegal. Similarly, the perspective of the fate of the Donbas region was on congruent levels during the Crimean annexation. However, the narrative has loosened ever since. The Donbas region, comprising of the major revolt cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, enjoys a popular narrative in Russia to be liberated from Ukraine as independent states: Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR) and Luhansk Peoples Republic (LPR) respectively, instead of joining the Russian Federation. While the opinion of incorporating the Donbas cities within Russia has diluted since the war of 2014, the narrative supporting a unified Ukraine remains the most unpopular opinion in Russia.

Eastern Ukraine has remained a reminder of the Crimean annexation; the stalemate in the Donbas region has tallied over 13000 fatalities including the Pro-Russian rebels but primarily comprising of the Ukrainian troops ambushed in Northern swathes of Eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that a total of 50 troops have perished in Donetsk and Luhansk in 2020 alone. The simmering tensions and the prolonged standoff has multiple roots. President Zelensky is a renowned Pro-European leader ad one of the major critics of the Kremlin intervention in the ex-Soviet countries including Ukraine. He has been crushing the clout of Pro-Russian militants in the pockets of Eastern Ukraine, incessantly blaming Russia for providing militaristic assistance to the rebels. Moreover, President Zelensky has been one of the primary proponents to peddle the cause of gaining NATO membership for Ukraine to put an ultimate end to the unremitting capitulation to Pro-Russian fighters and the Kremlin.

The strengthening of Ukraine-NATO relations has always irked the Kremlin regime: close movement and deployment of NATO forces along the Russian borders has been one of the most contentious and controversial aspects of diplomacy. This has established a grey zone between Ukraine and an official membership of the NATO: an accession that could likely lead to escalation through provocation and, dictated by Article 5 of the NATO charter, would mandate an armed retaliation by other members of NATO against Russia. The resulting devastation could not be even fathomed.

On the counter-side, President Putin is reeling through a tough tenure of his decades-long premiership. Covid fatalities run rampant and mass opposition blooms against the Kremlin in the aftermath of the incarceration of a popular Kremlin Critic, Alexei Navalny. Moscow requires a series of events to turn the stride in favor of President Putin.  While President Putin’s recent stretch of tenure being extended further has done little to appease the raucous Russians backing Navalny, a conflict with a long-despised Ukraine should set his presidency back to a stable trajectory. Russia’s actions in Crimea pulled the popularity of President Putin to a phenomenal rating of 86% in 2014. Given how his government was rattled by the opposition back then and how the annexation instantaneously notched up his image in Russia, moving in tandem, an active intervention in Ukraine could again turn things in favor of the desperate Kremlin.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Ruslan Khomchak, estimated a total of 35000 Russian-backed rebels in Eastern Ukraine. However, he estimated a tally of 50000 Russian troops lining across the border in Eastern Ukraine as well an additional 50000 troops lining the southern periphery in Crimea. While Kremlin has refused to be preparing for an invasion, a vague intent was implied by the Russian Presidential Spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, stating that: “Nobody is planning to move towards the war. However, Russia has always said that it won’t remain indifferent to the fate of the Russian-Speakers in South-eastern Ukraine”. The statement is laced with a threat that led Ukraine to pry for assistance, specifically from NATO. However, despite constant US warnings as well as an invitation to a Summit extended to President Putin by President Biden to ‘Discuss the full range of issues’, Russia continues to claim the deployment as a routine military exercise. However, with expedited NATO movements along the Eastern Ukrainian borders, the US marines infiltrating the Black Sea and Ukraine historically close to obtaining the NATO membership, an invasion could most likely be on cards. The gravity of the ground reality could be gauged by the recent statement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “Of course. We know it from 2014, we know it [Russian invasion] can be each [and any] day”.

Syed Zain Abbas Rizvi
Syed Zain Abbas Rizvi
The author is a political and economic analyst. He focuses on geopolitical policymaking and international affairs. Syed has written extensively on fintech economy, foreign policy, and economic decision making of the Indo-Pacific and Asian region.