cover image: OSW Commentary - A creeping annexation. Russia’s plans to partition Ukraine - A change of plans

20.500.12592/zt3tht

OSW Commentary - A creeping annexation. Russia’s plans to partition Ukraine - A change of plans

4 Jul 2022

As concerns the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), the plan to incorporate them into the Russian Federation should be viewed as a correction of the strategy pursued following the signing of the so-called Minsk agreements in 2015, which specified that the Donbas would be granted special status within the Ukrainian state. [...] the need to disarm the country, to halt its military cooperation with the West and to ban the operation of “political parties and organisations of a nationalist nature”, was intended to result in the government in Kyiv capitulating in exchange for the cessation of military activity.2 1 For more see: K. Nieczypor, ‘Ciała obce. [...] The fact that the planned seizure of the Donbas as a whole is taking longer than expect- ed has forced the Russian government to once again postpone the date of the pseudo-referendums on the region’s annexation to Russia. [...] This opportunity was introduced on the basis of a decree signed by Vladimir Putin in early May 2022 on further facilitation of the procedure for granting Russian citizenship to residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, which lifted the requirement for them to hold passports of the so-called People’s Republics (before the invasion 860,000 individuals from the so-called DPR and LPR had been issu. [...] The myth of a joint effort is intended to win Russians over to the idea of annexation and to the need to bear the economic and political costs associated with it.

Authors

Piotr Żochowski; Krzysztof Nieczypor; Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW)

Pages
6
Published in
Poland