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As leaders of Russia, Ukraine, the United States and Europe met to discuss a possible Russia-Ukraine war endgame, one part of Ukraine drew increasing attention: The Donbas, an industrial region in the eastern part of the country that has been a primary battlefield in the current war.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it has come to control a majority – but not all of – the Donbas.
After its invasion, Russia held elections that election specialists criticised as illegitimate in four Ukrainian territories. Russia then annexed the four territories. Two of the four annexed territories were Donetsk and Luhansk, which collectively form the Donbas. Russia currently controls all of Luhansk and a portion of Donetsk; Ukraine maintains control in the portions of Donetsk around the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. (The other territories Russia annexed were Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, of which Russia controls about 75 percent.)
Russian President Vladimir Putin wants any settlement to end the war to include giving Russia full control of the Donbas. To Ukrainians, this would be a bitter pill to swallow, effectively rewarding Russia for launching a war of conquest. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters in mid-August, “We will not leave the Donbas. We cannot do that.”
Why does Russia want the Donbas?
One factor driving Russia is that the region, despite some decline, possesses economic assets.
“The Donbas was highly industrialised in the mid-20th century, though it became something of a Rust Belt after the Cold War,” said Mark F Cancian, a senior adviser with the defence and security department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Donbas also has mineral resources, and its farmland “is some of the best in the world”, Cancian said.
A second factor is the region’s strategic value. Its port of Mariupol provides Black Sea access, and as “the longest-lasting battlefield in the war”, it’s one that both sides would be loath to give up, said Erik Herron, a West Virginia University political scientist.
Putin could see control of Donbas as a way to “goad the West and create havoc”, said Richard Arnold, a Muskingum University political scientist.
Perhaps the biggest factor for Russia, though, is that the region is home to many Russian speakers, many of whom migrated there during the Soviet era.
“The Donbas played an important role in Soviet socialist mythology” as home of the archetypal “Soviet man”, said Alexander Motyl, a political scientist at Rutgers University-Newark.
“Russia has made many unsubstantiated claims about the treatment of Russian speakers there by the Ukrainian government,” Herron said. As a result, “Donbas is symbolically central to Russia’s story about why the war is happening.”
The Donbas’ value to Russia may be more symbolic than tangible, experts said.
“Donbas is critical to fulfilling the vision of the ‘Russkiy Mir’ – the ‘Russian world’ – that Putin is trying to create,” said Matthew Schmidt, a University of New Haven political scientist.
Does Russia have a legitimate claim on the Donbas?
Experts say Russian claims on the Donbas region are dubious.
Russia argues that Ukraine was part of “greater Russia” for 500 years. However, this period ended in 1994 when Russia, Ukraine, the US and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum.
“Ukraine lived up to its part of the agreement, but Russia violated it in 2014” when it seized Crimea, Herron said.
“Just because something was one way once does not make it legitimate now,” Arnold said.
Russia also argues that the region’s Russian speakers want to be part of Russia. But two decades ago, Herron coauthored a study that found that the majority of Russian speakers living in Ukraine saw Ukraine as their homeland and did not look to Russia as a defender of their interests.
“Just because someone may use Russian as their primary language of communication does not mean that they have social and political preferences that align with Moscow,” Herron said. He said subsequent research has supported this view.
As an analogy, experts noted that English-speaking Canadians don’t consider themselves American, while Spanish-speaking Americans often do.
“Lots of Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine, including ethnic Ukrainians, speak or spoke Russian as their first language,” said Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Ukraine who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “One of them is Volodymyr Zelenskyy.”
Would Ukraine be willing to give up the Donbas?
The Ukrainian government’s firm position has been to maintain its claim on Donbas, and it’s one widely shared by the Ukrainian public.
“Any land deal is not just about the land, but also about the people who live on that land,” Herron said. “Ukrainians have observed how their friends and relatives have been treated in occupied territories and are not supportive of subjecting more Ukrainians to Russian rule.”
But the possibility of Ukraine acknowledging the military facts on the ground provides some room to manoeuvre.
Zelenskyy’s call for a ceasefire would mean continued Russian control of the areas in Donbas that Russia currently holds, even if Ukraine does not give up its formal, long-term claim.
“The Ukrainians might accept an arrangement whereby they don’t cede sovereignty but accept the situation on the ground,” Cancian said. “Getting some security guarantees from NATO will be critical for any deal.”
