Ukraine crisis: why has Putin moved into the Donbas?

Europe has woken up to a dark day after Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into two rebel-held regions of Eastern Ukraine.  

The deployment came after an explosive speech by the Russian President last night in which he declared that Ukraine has no history of being a true nation, before recognising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent states. 

Moscow’s recognition of separatists’ claims to these Ukrainian territories has “torn up international law”, Boris Johnson said today. 

Why has Putin chosen these regions, what will the ramifications be and is a full-scale invasion of Ukraine now inevitable? Here’s what you need to know. 

Why these regions?

The Donetsk and Luhansk regions — collectively known as the Donbas — are located in eastern Ukraine, next to the border with Russia.

While Western allies recognise the Donbas as Ukrainian soil, there’s already a big Russian presence in the area. The majority of the 3.6 million people living in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions speak Russian as their first language. Yesterday, Putin described eastern Ukraine as “ancient Russian lands”.

A large part of Donetsk and Luhansk is still governed by Kiev but Russian-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 and now control just over a third of the two regions.

For eight years, Moscow has organised, equipped and funded the separatists in their self-declared “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk. The rebellion has claimed 14,000 lives – including many civilians – since 2014. 

In recent years, Russian passports have been given out to large numbers of people in Donetsk and Luhansk.

The Kremlin is now claiming that Russian troops will perform “peacekeeping functions” in these breakaway regions – but the US has dismissed this as “nonsense”.

What are the latest troop movements?

Footage released overnight appears to show Russian military vehicles heading towards the Ukrainian border and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said this morning “we’ve seen open source reporting… Russian military equipment is moving into that region now.”

Many are fearful that Russian advances in the Donbas will pave the way for a new invasion of Ukraine that goes well beyond the self-declared Republics. 

How are world leaders responding?

After chairing an emergency Cobra meeting this morning, Boris Johnson has announced that the UK will unveil the “first barrage” of economic sanctions against Russia today, effective immediately. 

He is expected to set out more details on the sanctions package in Parliament later, but he has specified that sanctions will target bodies not just in Luhansk and Donetsk, but also in Russia itself.

These sanctions will just be an initial step as “we expect more Russian irrational behaviour to come”, warned Johnson. “All the evidence”, he added, suggests Putin is “bent on a full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.

Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said he is considering a request from his foreign ministry to break off diplomatic relations with Russia. And, according to NBC, the Biden administration is discussing plans with Zelensky to relocate him from Kiev to Lviv in the west of the country. 

Arguably the most significant retaliation to date, however, has come from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. After avoiding the topic for some time, Scholz has announced that Germany is pulling the plug on the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline in light of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.

Why do sanctions present so many difficulties?

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has insisted the UK and EU “will coordinate to deliver swift sanctions against Putin’s regime”. Yet coordinating a unified response between allies inevitably presents difficulties. 

Debate has already arisen, for instance, over whether Putin’s advances properly count as an “invasion.” A White House official has reportedly voiced reluctance to impose the full package of sanctions prepared by the US in light of an invasion since Russian troops were already in the Donbas region. There’s also the tactical question of whether it’s better to hold off on the harshest of sanctions for leverage in the hope of preventing a full scale-invasion of Ukraine.

And then, of course, there’s the critical issue that sanctions come at a cost to the West too. 

Moscow’s ambassador to London, Andrey Kelin, warned last week that Russia’s central banks are ready to hit Britain with “immediate retaliation” if it tries to sanction Russia for invading Ukraine. 

We are already seeing early signs today that sanctions could intensify Europe’s energy crisis.

Russia is the second largest exporter of crude oil after Saudi Arabia and the world’s top producer of natural gas.

Oil prices reached a seven-year high today, and war – plus the imposition of sanctions – will further disrupt oil and gas supply chains across the world. 

While only 3% of Britain’s gas supplies come from Russia, Germany, for instance, imports about 60% of its gas from Russia. The squeeze will have a knock-on effect across Europe.

While increasing Europe’s reliance on Moscow for gas via Nord Stream 2 may well have been unwise, the termination of the pipeline could be damaging in the short-term. The pipeline was set to carry enough natural gas from Russia to fuel roughly 26 million households in Europe, which would have gone a long way to solving current gas shortages.