Eastern Ukraine in Russia's crosshairs: That's why Putin wants to conquer the Donbass at all costs

Created: 04/19/2022, 13:16

By: Markus Hofstetter

After the failed attempt to conquer Kiev in the Ukraine war, Putin sets his sights on the Donbass.

Why is the region so important for the Kremlin?

Kyiv - In the Ukraine conflict, the Russian attack on Kyiv failed, and Kremlin troops have withdrawn from the west of the country.

Now the events are concentrated on the Ukrainian east.

On March 25, Moscow said the army would focus on the "liberation" of the Donbass region.

Finally, on Easter Monday (April 19), the Russian army launched its major offensive to conquer eastern Ukraine (here you can find the ticker on the current situation in the war zone).

The east of the Donbass has been at war since 2014, which has cost the lives of around 14,000 people since then.

The internationally unrecognized people's republics of Luhansk and Donetsk, which make up around a third of the entire Donbass region, are fighting the elected government in Kyiv with Russia's support.

On February 21, Putin recognized the two people's republics as independent states, which can be seen as an opening move for the war that began just three days later.

In a television speech on February 24, the head of the Kremlin justified his troops' invasion of the neighboring country with the fact that the "people's republics" of the Donbass had asked Russia for help.

The importance of the Donbass for the Ukraine war: The region was the industrial powerhouse of the Soviet Union

The Donbass with the two cities Donetsk and Luhansk was considered an industrial powerhouse of the former Soviet Union, which made an important contribution to the economic rise of the country with a large number of industrial companies and coal mines.

But due to the great importance of the region, the repression by the state was also great.

"Terror was very present under Soviet rule," Markian Dobczansky of Harvard University's Ukrainian Research Institute told US broadcaster CNN.

"Repression was widespread throughout the Soviet Union, but it was much more pronounced in the Donbass." Suspicions, arrests and show trials were widespread.

A coal mine in Donbass (archive photo from 2014) © YAY images/Imago

The collapse of the Soviet Union reduced the economic importance of the region.

"In the 1990s there was an economic downturn," Rory Finnin, a professor at the University of Cambridge, told CNN.

Declining living standards and increasing poverty plagued the region during the transition away from communism.

The turn of the century changed the situation.

The Donbass is once again an industrial powerhouse that complements agricultural production in the rest of Ukraine.

The importance of the Donbass for the Ukraine war: the majority of residents do not want a merger with Russia

But Donbass relations with neighboring Russia have remained strong.

CNN reports that according to the only census of the post-Soviet era, conducted in 2001, just over half of the region's population is Ukrainian and around a third is of Russian descent.

Unlike in western Ukraine, however, Russian is the dominant language in Donbass.

"But it is important not to fall into the trap of thinking that Donbass is pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian," Finnin said.

This is also shown by a survey conducted by broadcasters shortly before the Ukraine war.

According to the report, just under a fifth of the residents of the eastern regions of Ukraine, which includes Donbass, supported the idea that Ukraine and Russia should become one state.

However, 45 percent of those surveyed in eastern Ukraine said that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people”.

The importance of the Donbass for the Ukraine war: Conquest would be a consolation prize for Putin

In the psyche of the Russian leadership under Valdimir Putin, however, the Donbass, despite its affiliation with Ukraine, is of great importance.

According to CNN, Anna Makanyu, ex-director of the US National Security Council, said Putin sees himself as a tsar appointed by God to restore the power and glory of the Russian Empire.

However, without conquering Donbass, such a project is doomed to fail.

"The Donbass supplied the entire Soviet Union with raw materials," says Dobczansky.

"In this context, Putin has refocused his faltering invasion on a region where war with Ukraine began eight years ago."

There is also speculation that the Kremlin ruler will aim to boast a victory by May 9, the day of the Soviet Union's victory over Hitler's Germany in World War II.

This is also the opinion of Samir Puri from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

“There is a possibility that Putin now wants to split Ukraine in two.

With that, he can claim a victory domestically and mitigate criticism that the invasion was botched,” he told CNN.

The Donbass would be a consolation prize, since a conquest of Kiev is no longer possible.

A conquest of the region, especially the hard-fought port city of Mariupol, would also have a tactical advantage.

This would create a land bridge to the Crimea, which would make it easier to supply the peninsula.