Why the Donbas Matters to Putin So Much

At a summit in Alaska last Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin was said to have told US President Donald Trump that Ukraine should give up control of the eastern Donabas region in the country as a condition for ending the war.

Ukrainian President Folodimir Zelinski has repeatedly said that he will not make regional concessions in exchange for the peace agreement, while stressing that he is not within his constitutional authority to do so.

Zelensky warned earlier this month that Russia would use Donbas as a “starting point for a new attack in the future” if Ukraine completely delivered it. “If we leave Donabas on its own or under pressure, we will start a third war,” Zellinski said. The latest polling also shows that the vast majority of Ukrainians (75 percent) oppose the waiver of the official lands of Russia.

The Donbas, which is short for “Donets Basin”, is an industrial zone and mining of Russia. It consists of two smooths, or Donetsk and Luhansk – which is home to about 4 million people.

Here’s what you need to know about Donbas – why was a flash point in the Ukrainian war from the beginning, and why are you preparing to stay in the center of tensions between Kyiv and Moscow in the foreseeable future.

Strategic symbolic and vital area

One of Putin’s main justifications for Ukraine’s concentration focused on Donbas. Putin, a former KGB officer, often displays his nostalgia for the Soviet era, the issue that the war in Ukraine is part of a justified effort to restore Russian territory, and often photographed Donbas as Russian historically.

In 2022, Putin claimed basically that Ukraine committed genocide against Russian speakers in the region. This has been echoed by previous false allegations that Putin came against Georgia, which like Ukraine is a former Soviet Republic, with regard to South Ossetia before Russia invaded the country in 2008.

Ukraine is a former Soviet Republic, many of which were also part of the Russian Empire – it is true that the Ukrainians and the Russians share many cultural, economic and historical relations. But Putin has distorted history and facts with many of his allegations about the country and people, which experts view as part of a broader effort to erase the nation of Ukraine and its distinguished identity.

Putin’s demand for Russian loudspeakers who are persecuted in Donbas is “garbage propaganda” and an attempt by the Russian president to justify his “decades’ obsession with” “dominant” and “eliminating” Ukraine, William Taylor, a former American ambassador in Ukraine, Foreign policy.

The Russian speakers are dwell in largely by Russian speakers, which is a product near the proximity to the region and historical ties with Russia. The region was an important industrial and informed center for the Soviet Union, which led to a great influx of Russian workers during the Soviet era-especially during the reconstruction period after the Second World War.

Russian is often the first language for people in Donbas, including ethnic Ukrainians. According to the latest statistics in Ukraine, which was conducted in 2001, the Ethnic Russians consist of a third of the population in Donbas, while the ethnic Ukrainians constitute a little more than half. When the Soviet Union collapsed, nearly two -thirds of the Russian population of Donbas considered their first language. The last ballot also found about 51 percent of people in eastern Ukraine talking about a mixture of both Ukrainian and Russian at home.

Although Donbas has historical links with Russia and the largest speaking population in Russian, people in the region do not necessarily sympathize with Moscow-despite Putin’s claims on the contrary. Some of the Ukrainian brochures that started fighting against the separatists supporting Russia in Donbas in 2014, such as the DNIPRO-1 battalion, were Russian spokesperson, for example. Donbas is a major example of the complex dynamic between language and national identity.

The history of voting in the region also draws a complex image in terms of its feelings towards Russia. In 1991, for example, Ukraine voted an overwhelming majority for independence from the Soviet Union, including 83 percent of Donbas. But in the 2010 presidential election in Ukraine, Victor Yanukovic won the presidency of Russia with a landslide in the eastern region.

Zelinski, whose first Russian language was a campaign against the war in eastern Ukraine, was somewhat supported by an overwhelming majority by voters in not busy parts of Donbas in the country’s 2019 elections.

The Ukrainians in Donbas also expressed their dissatisfaction with Russia, as the war destroyed their region and kills their relatives.

Besides Donbas’s symbolic importance of Putin, the region also has a great strategic and economic value. It is an area rich in resource with charcoal and mineral deposits, as well as agricultural lands, and the coast along the Azov Sea. This helps, in part, why Donbas was a pivotal point in the war.

Warm

Ukrainians often say that the war did not start with the full invasion of Russia in 2022, but in 2014-the time of the massive political and social turmoil of Ukraine. That year, Russia invaded and illegally invaded Crimea from Ukraine and began supporting supportive militants in the conflict against the Ukrainian forces in Donbas.

It was not long before Moscow included the Crimea, which was convicted of all over the world, the separatists supporting Russia in Donbas began seizing lands and declared the separation republics: The Republic of the People of Donetsk and the Republic of the People of Luhansk.

The fierce battles between the Ukrainian and separatist forces fought early in the Kremlin. The ceasefire agreements, known as the Minsk Conventions, were signed in 2014 and 2015 that helped reduce the fighting. However, the agreements were not fully implemented, and the conflict continued with varying levels of severity for eight years – killing about 14,000 people.

The fighting that started in 2014 in Donbas, which witnessed about 1.5 million people fleeing from the region at the time, laid the basis for Russia’s broader invasion after eight years. With the support of the Russian army, the separatists in Donbas had already seized a third of the area by the time that Putin ordered the beginning of the “special military operation” in February 2022.

In the period before the invasion, Putin officially admitted the independence of the declared separatist republics in Donbas, in addition to recognizing all regional rebels in the region. At the time, the president and the newborn at the time, Joe Biden, warned that Putin seemed to “set the logical basis for taking more lands by force.”

When Russia launched its invasion on a large scale in 2022, it did so with the aim of subjugating all Ukraine. Western governments were very concerned that the Ukrainian forces would be mired and warned that Kiev could be invaded within days.

However, the Ukrainian army placed more solid resistance than expected, which resulted in major injuries to the Russian forces. Russia has failed to seize Kiev and its broader goals in general. After its early failures, Russia in March 2022 indicated that it turned its attention to “liberating Donbas”, describing it as the “main goal” of the war.

But after more than a decade of fighting in Donbas, first by the Kremlin -backed separatists, then by the Russian army itself, Russia still does not occupy the entire region. Russian forces are currently controlling about 88 percent of Donbas, all of which are occupied by a slice of Luhansk and about 70 percent of Donetsk. Ukraine still controls about 30 percent of Donetsk, and about 250,000 people live in those non -occupied parts of Oblast.

Ukraine Castle belt

Experts are widely agreed that Russia does not have the ability to quickly overcome the rest of Donbas and that doing so will cost tens of thousands of lives and probably take years. Putin’s insistence that Kiev is to give up the remainder of the Donbas without a fight is considered one of the many signs that he does not believe in long-term peace-despite Trump’s relative optimism about the opportunities for an agreement to end the war (although Trump has also admitted that Putin may not want an agreement).

Taylor said Putin “is not sincerely considering a peace agreement other than the conditions that have acquired Ukraine.” Taylor said that the Russian leader launched a large -scale invasion in 2022 as a “comprehensive attempt to control Ukraine” and eliminate it as a sovereign country. “I am convinced that this is still his goal.”

Russian forces occupy nearly five Ukraine, but they are still struggling to achieve more than gradual gains in the battlefield. Taylor said that Russia “has not made great progress” to capture the Ukrainian -controlled lands in Donbas during the past year or so, pointing to the failed efforts of the Russian army to seize the eastern city of Boucrovsk as a major example.

Many major cities in West Donetsk are still maintained by Ukraine – Kamurorsk, Sloveansk, Kostyantynivka and Druzhkivka – also important parts of “Castle Belt” in Kiev and decisive for their ability to defend the rest of the country.

“Ukraine has spent the last 11 years of pouring time, money and effort in strengthening the castle belt and creating a large defensive infrastructure in these cities and around these cities,” said the war studying institute, which has followed the conflict in Ukraine for years.

Along these lines, Taylor said it would be “unimaginable” to Ukraine to give up “high strategic reasons” in Donbas and give up control of these cities of the castle, which is “nonsense” for Putin “for the request” or even suggests “this scenario.

But while Ukraine does not want to abandon the land that it is still carrying in Donbas, the unfortunate reality of Kiev is that it is unlikely to regain control of the lands occupied by the Russian in Donetsk or Luhansk.

Since things are currently standing, and as Trump continues to pressure for an agreement to end the war, this may mean that Ukraine may have to submit a recognition of reality for Russia’s control of lands in Donbas – and other parts of the country – to obtain an agreement via the finish line.

But even if this happens, this may be a matter of time only before Putin re -operates the war. Meanwhile, Russia is still pushing strongly for more lands in Ukraine. This is why there are increasing calls between Ukraine supporters to Trump to strengthen Kiev’s negotiating position by increasing pressure on Moscow significantly, while increasing military support for Ukraine and harsh economic sanctions on Russia.

Taylor said that the “best scenario” moved is that Trump is using the economic, military and political lever that it has to “persuade Putin that he cannot win.” He warned that Putin “will only go to stop and palace the Ukrainians until Trump was not using the leverage he obtained.”