Why is Donbas at the center of the Ukraine crisis?

(CNN) — Despite Russian forces concentrating on Ukraine’s border, the spotlight this week has returned to the low-intensity warfare in eastern Ukraine and its possible role in setting the stage for a broader conflict. .

For the past three days, there has been an increase in shelling along various parts of the front lines. Ukrainians say shelling by Russian-backed separatists is at its highest in nearly three years, and the separatists allege the use of heavy weapons by the Ukrainian armed forces against civilian areas.

On Thursday, a kindergarten in Ukrainian-controlled territory less than 5 kilometers from the front line was attacked. On Friday and Saturday, the Ukrainian authorities reported a new increase in shelling with heavy weapons, which is prohibited within a radius of 50 kilometers from the front lines by the Minsk Agreements.

Ukrainian authorities say there were 60 violations of a ceasefire on Thursday, many of them with heavy weapons.

Leaders of the two pro-Russian breakaway territories, which call themselves the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, said the Ukrainians are planning a major military offensive in the area. On Friday they organized mass evacuations of civilians to Russia, while instructing the men to stay and take up arms.

Ukrainian officials repeatedly deny such plans. On Friday, the head of the National Security Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, said: “There is a great danger that the representatives of the Russian Federation who are there will provoke certain things. They can do things that have nothing to do with our army. “.

Danilov provided no evidence, but added: “We can’t say what exactly they are going to do, whether it’s blowing up buses with people planning to be evacuated to the Rostov region, or blowing up houses, we don’t know.”

Danilov spoke just hours after the mysterious explosion in a vehicle belonging to a senior official in the city of Donetsk, near the separatists’ headquarters.

The region’s leader, Denis Pushilin, called it an act of terrorism. But Ukrainian authorities and Western officials said it was a staged provocation, perhaps designed to justify a Russian intervention.

After being relatively quiet for much of this year, the “contact line” has been much more active in recent days, as the future of Ukraine’s breakaway regions becomes entangled in a much wider range of grievances and demands. russians

What is the recent history in Donbas?

The war broke out in 2014 after Russian-backed rebels seized government buildings in towns and cities in eastern Ukraine. Heavy fighting left parts of the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts of the Donbas region in the hands of Russian-backed separatists. Russia also annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that drew worldwide condemnation.

The separatist-controlled areas in Donbas became known as the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). The Ukrainian government in Kyiv claims that the two regions are indeed occupied by Russia. Self-proclaimed republics are not recognized by any government, including Russia. The Ukrainian government refuses to speak directly with either of the two breakaway republics.

The 2015 Minsk II agreement led to an unstable ceasefire agreement and the conflict turned into a static war along the Line of Contact separating the Ukrainian government and separatist-controlled areas. The Minsk Agreements (named after the Belarusian capital where they were concluded) prohibit heavy weapons near the Line of Contact.

The language surrounding the conflict is highly politicized. The Ukrainian government calls the separatist forces “invaders” and “occupiers”. Russian media call the separatist forces “militias” and claim they are locals defending themselves against the Kyiv government.

More than 14,000 people have been killed in the Donbas conflict since 2014. Ukraine says 1.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes, most staying in areas of Donbas that remain under Ukrainian control and some 200,000 have resettled in the wider Kyiv region.

How has Putin fueled the conflict?

Separatists in Donbas have had substantial backing from Moscow. Russia maintains it has no soldiers on the ground, but US, NATO and Ukrainian officials say the Russian government supplies the separatists, provides them with advisory and intelligence support, and integrates its own officers into its 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 trying to establish facts on the ground by naturalizing Ukrainians as Russian citizens, a de facto way of recognizing breakaway states. He also gives you a reason to intervene in the Ukraine.

And this week, the Russian parliament recommended that the Kremlin formally recognize parts of the LPR and DPR as independent states, another escalation in rhetoric that US officials say is evidence Putin has no intention of honoring the Minsk agreement. .

Speaking on Wednesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Ukraine “will not stop until we liberate 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, saying Russia has the right to intervene militarily to protect them.

On Wednesday, Putin alleged that “genocide” was being committed in Donbas. His accusations are not new, but the timing is a cause for concern for Western politicians, who fear a repeat of the 2008 conflict in Georgia.

In invoking genocide this week, Putin echoed 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 penetrated deep into Georgian territory.

What is happening in Donbas at the moment?

On Saturday, people from separatist-controlled regions began to heed the evacuation order and set off in buses across the Russian border. Russian authorities promised them shelter and compensation, while Russian state media covered all aspects and episodes of the limited exodus, with the unmistakable message that people were leaving by the thousands for fear of Ukrainian aggression.

As of early Saturday morning, Russian news agencies reported that some 10,000 people had already crossed the border. And Russian authorities say they are ready for up to 900,000 people to arrive, though the separatist leadership has ordered the men to stay behind and take up arms and has announced a general mobilization.

As it was in 2014, the Donbas region is now the crucible of 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.

CNN’s Tamara Qiblawi wrote from Lviv, Ukraine; Nathan Hodge of Moscow; and Ivana Kottasová from Kyiv, Ukraine. Anastasia Horpinchenko and Kara Fox contributed to this report.