After the prison swap between Russia and Ukraine, the West expects Moscow to withdraw its troops from the Donbass. That will reportedly be one of the topics that the Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as French and German leaders Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel could discuss in October.
Officially, the Kremlin denies any involvement in the conflict that erupted in 2014, but on the ground it has been supporting the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic forces who have been fighting against Ukrainian army for the past five years.
There might not be regular Russian troops in the Donbass, but without Russian military and political support, the self-proclaimed republics would have ceased to exist a long time ago. Western leaders are putting pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the conflict by de facto abandoning the Donbass. In exchange, the European Union might ease sanctions on Russia, but they will not be completely lifted until the Crimea dispute is resolved.
Recently, Ukraine’s new President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to talk about both Donbass and Crimea.
“Let us discuss who Crimea belongs to and who is not there in the Donbass,” Zelensky said, adding that he wanted the leaders of the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom present at the talks. Shortly after the invitation, leaders of Russia and Ukraine held their first telephone conversation. Even though they reportedly discussed the prison exchange, the very fact that Putin didn’t reject the proposal to talk about the status of Crimea can be interpreted as another sign of Russian weakness, as Moscow treats Crimea as its own territory.
Zelensky, on the other hand, openly said that Ukraine will never give up Crimea and that the Donbass region should not have a special status. Since a compromise will hardly be reached, the West will most likely keep pressuring Russia to end its support to the Donbass republics. The Crimean issue will, most likely, be discussed once the Donbass conflict is fully resolved.
The problem for the Kremlin, however, is the fact that any concessions over the Donbass will be interpreted as an open betrayal of the pro-Russian forces and Russian population in the region. This wouldn’t be the first time, though. In 2014, during the post-Maidan chaos in a destabilized Ukraine, Russia had an opportunity to capture a huge area in the southeast of the country, which has historically been called Novorossiya, and is inhabited by a Russian speaking population. Had Russia seized the seven southeastern Ukrainian regions, and not just Crimea, Ukraine would have remained a landlocked country without any military and industrial potential.
Presently, the Russian sphere of influence in Ukraine ends at the Donetsk front line. The Novorossiya project was abandoned, and the Kremlin officials and propagandists explained on many occasions that they had to give up Ukraine in order to avoid World War 3. It is interesting that, on the other hand, Russia sent its troops to Syria to help President Bashar Assad fight the Western backed proxies, without any fears of a World War 3.
Russia is, most likely, trying to find a way to return the Donbass to Ukraine, but in such way that it does not damage Putin’s approval ratings. That is why the process of reintegration of the region into Ukraine might last for years, unless a Western-backed Ukraine captures the territory in a blitzkrieg operation. In that case, the Kremlin will have a hard choice – to intervene and get serious packages sanctions, or to turn a blind eye and face another geopolitical humiliation.
Since the Kremlin has not been able to end any conflicts in the past three decades, Russian leaders will most likely try to buy time and keep the status quo as long as possible. It remains to be seen if the West will allow this conflict to go on for years, or if it will find ways to force Russia to make concessions.
Image credit: spoilt.exile
About “has historically been called Novorossiya”: IIRC that was coined by Kremlin mid-18th century, used a few decades, then dropped. Revived by Putin only a few years ago.