Fears of an invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army are at their highest. To avoid military confrontation, diplomatic negotiations intensified. After a telephone interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Saturday evening February 19, Emmanuel Macron is due to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, Sunday February 20. The day before, in Munich (Germany), Western diplomacy renewed its calls for de-escalation. The Ukrainian leader said he was ready to dialogue with the master of the Kremlin. A proposal already made in 2021, but remained a dead letter.
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On the ground, tensions are growing in eastern Ukraine, where, since 2014, a latent war in the Donbass pits the Ukrainian army against Moscow-backed separatists. here’s how the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk (two million inhabitants) and Lugansk (1.5 million), partially controlled by thepro-Russian secessionists, have again become the epicenter of tensions in recent days.
A “dramatic increase” in ceasefire violations
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said on Saturday that they had observed a “dramatic increase” ceasefire violations, with a total of 1,566 violations in 24 hours. A record this year. According to the OSCE, the number of armed incidents is now the same as before July 2020, when an agreement was reached to strengthen the ceasefire.
Dn the Donetsk region, the observers recorded, in their daily report published on Friday (in English), 222 violations of the ceasefire, including 135 explosions, Thursday, against 189 Wednesday and 24 Tuesday. In the Lugansk region, the mission recorded 648 ceasefire violations, including 519 explosions, on Thursday, compared to 402 on Wednesday and 129 on Tuesday.
All day Friday, shelling was heard in Stanitsa Luganska, according to AFP journalists. This city of 12,000 inhabitants, under Ukrainian control, is located on the line of contact between pro-Russian separatist regions and the rest of Ukraine. She had already been targeted Thursday by shots which had notably hit a nursery school, gutted by a shell shortly after the arrival of the children. No fatalities were reported, but three employees were injured.
Kiev announced on Saturday the death of two of its soldiers during these clashes. Mortar shells also fell not far from the Ukrainian Interior Minister, Denys Monastyrsky, visiting the front, without causing any casualties, as the special envoys of France 2 reported.
Ukrainians and separatists accuse each other of firing heavy weapons at the adversary and targeting civilians. According to a message published on Monday evening by the separatists’ press organ, DAN, three pro-Russian fighters were killed and another injured in mortar fire on the village of Lozové, near the rebel stronghold, Donetsk.
Incendiary statements by pro-Russian separatist leaders
The leaders of the pro-Russian separatists on Saturday proclaimed the “general mobilization”. “I call on my fellow reservists to report to the military conscription offices. Today, I signed the general mobilization decree”, Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk “Republic” since 2018, announced in a video statement. A few minutes later, Leonid Passetchnik, head of the Luhansk “Republic”, signed a similar decree calling for the mobilization of men aged 18 to 55 in order to prepare, according to him, for “to repel an attack”.
Denis Pushilin affirmed that the forces of his region had thwarted attacks fomented according to him by Kiev, and accused the Ukrainian army of continuing to attack his territory. According to the two men, the latter is preparing an offensive to invade their regions. Kiev, however, denied wanting to regain control of the separatist areas by force.
The two pro-Russian leaders had already ordered the evacuation of civilians to neighboring Russia on Friday. Russian television channels broadcast images of the evacuations, including children in the courtyard of their orphanage. According to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, more than 40,000 people from separatist areas have been evacuated to Russia. Vladimir Putin ordered the payment of 10,000 rubles (about 114 euros) to each person evacuated from these areas.
Already at the end of January, Denis Pushilin had demanded that Moscow provide him with weapons to deal with the forces of Kiev, even though the ruling party in Russia, United Russia, had called on the Kremlin to deliver weapons to the separatists. For their part, several Western countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, have delivered weapons and ammunition to Ukraine in recent days. Kiev and its Western allies have long accused Moscow of supporting pro-Russian separatists militarily and financially, which the Russian authorities have always denied.
A latent war that benefits Moscow
These two Donbass territories have been controlled by rebels for eight years, bogging down the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in a conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists that has left more than 14,000 dead and 1.5 million displaced.
Despite the Minsk agreements, signed in 2014 and 2015 to grant special status to the two entities, the peace process has made little progress. It must lead to elections and to a very large autonomy of these two territories in exchange for a return to the Ukrainian bosom. But neither Kyiv nor Moscow agree on the way forward. “Russia wants the autonomy of these territories in the Ukrainian Constitution, elections in Donbass and then demilitarization – these points are in this order” in the text, explained to franceinfo Alexandra Goujon, lecturer at the University of Burgundy, to franceinfo. “But Ukraine considers it impossible to hold elections until the area is demilitarized.”
Despite some progress, in particular with a move away from heavy weapons on either side of the line of contact, “this conflict is made not to be resolved”analyzes Alexandra Goujon. “The Russian objective is to destabilize Ukraine in depth, so that the country cannot make its own foreign policy choices, for example with joining NATO or the EU.” On the other hand, “Russia does not need this mining basin with a high proportion of retirees, economically devastated and where there is no more investment”.
On his side, “Ukrainian does not really want to return to these territories either, and opinion has risen sharply with regard to the populations of these separatist territories, considered as traitors“, analysis Anna Colin Lebedev, lecturer in political science and specialist in post-Soviet societies. In summary, Kiev is reluctant to make concessions to recover these territories, and Moscow intends to exploit the file as long as it needs it.