As negotiations on potential deals to end the war in Ukraine intensifies, much of the debate centers around parts of the country that have long been at the heart of Russia’s goals.
The Ukrainian region of Donetsk and Luhansk is collectively known as Donbas – was an industrial powerhouse during the Soviet era, where coal mines and steel factories are located.
However, the Donbas region has a wealth of farmland, important rivers and coastlines in the Sea of Azov.
Historically, Donbas was the most “Russian” part of Ukraine, with a considerable number of Russian speakers. On multiple trips to the region ten years ago, it was clear that some of the people had little love for Kiev’s distant government.
It was here that Putin began his efforts to destabilize Ukraine in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea. Some of them had several tank-equipped people leapt through the region and quickly took the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk, the unprepared and unmotivated Ukrainian forces of the time.
For almost eight years, the Breakaway enclave saw the battle fiercely between Russian-supported separatists and Ukrainian troops, according to Ukrainian figures.
Since 2014, at least 1.5 million Ukrainians have left Donba. It is estimated that over 3 million people live under Russian occupation. Moscow has handed out hundreds of thousands of Russian passports to people in an area managed by the Separatists of Donbas.
But Putin wanted more. On the eve of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, he said the so-called civilized world would prefer to “this horror, to ignore the fact that nearly four million people submit and perceive Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states.
Later that year, Moscow annexed after a false national, unilaterally and illegally, along with Zaporisia and Herson’s southern regions, despite partially occupying them.
For the Kremlin, there is a big difference between withdrawing from the occupied territory (as the Russians did when they pulled back from much of northern Ukraine in 2022) and giving up on areas officially absorbed by their homeland, especially for leaders like Putin, who are sticking to the “great Russia.”
Analysts say at the current rate, Russian troops will still take years to complete the occupation of the annexed one. Similarly, there is little chance that Ukraine can recover much of what it has already lost. It’s more than 70% of almost all Luhansk and Donetsk.
However, Kiev still holds the “fortress belts” of industrial cities, railways and roads, an important barrier to Putin’s army: places like Slobiansk, Kramatrsk, and Kostiantinibka.
For Ukrainian President Voldymir Zelensky, the territory that many Ukrainian soldiers gave life to protect in order to abandon the rest of Donetsk is political suicide. According to the Kiev Institute for International Sociology, about three-quarters of Ukrainians are opposed to abandoning their land to Russia.
As Zelensky repeatedly pointed out, retreating from the rest of Donetsk, as is an unconstitutional surrender of Ukrainian land, leaves the vast open plains of central Ukraine vulnerable to the next Russian attack.
For Zelensky’s European allies, it would violate an important principle: that the attack cannot be rewarded on the territory and must protect Ukrainian sovereignty.
Like in 2014, Donbass became a melting pot of Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine, the biggest test in Europe to stick to a rules-based international order.
