The Duma wants the secessionist regions prorussians of Donetsk and Lugansk, located in Donbass, in eastern Ukraine, are recognized by Vladimir Putin as “Independent and Sovereign States”. The deputies adopted, on Tuesday February 15, a resolution to this effect, which will be immediately sent to the President of the Russian Federation, according to several Russian media, including the Tass agency and Ria Novosti (in Russian). In detail, 351 deputies voted in favor of this text, presented by the Communist Party, 16 voted against and one abstained.
This parliamentary initiative comes in an eminently tense context between Russia and Ukraine. The two self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which unilaterally declared their independence in 2014, are partly occupied by pro-Russian separatists and have been fighting, with the support of Moscow, the Ukrainian army for eight years. Some 13,000 people lost their lives in the conflict.
“Washington escalates tension, supplies arms to Ukraine along with other European countries, and Kiev continues to disregard the Minsk agreements”Duma Speaker Viacheslav Volodin wrote on Telegram. “All this poses threats and risks to the lives of our fellow citizens and compatriots living in the Donetsk People’s Republic and the People’s Republic of Lugansk.“
Russia regularly denounces the presence of Ukrainian soldiers along the Donbass demarcation line.
A possible recognition of these secessionist regions would represent a very serious casus belli in the region. Kiev, by the way, has already made it known that such recognition would put “de facto” Moscow out of the Minsk-2 agreements. This text, signed in 2014 by the four parties concerned (Ukraine, Russia, self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk), had made it possible to put an end to most of the very violent fighting in eastern Ukraine. Ssigned under Franco-German mediation, they provide for the eventual return of these territories to the control of Kiev.