People of Donbass as supporters of Russia

But the struggle for the territories in the Donbass would be almost impossible without the long-standing struggle for the heads of the population. How was it that the residents of eastern Ukraine offered little resistance for all these years of Russian expansion? Why did millions of them find the idea of ​​a “Russian world” more attractive than Kiev’s European aspirations?
“Our organization stands for autonomy within Ukraine,” Valeriy Cheker, the chairman of the newly formed “Luhansk People’s Movement,” explained its goals in 1990. However, only if Kyiv supports the preservation of the Soviet Union. Otherwise, “the transition from Donbass to the jurisdiction of Russia” is needed.

longing for a proletarian state

Even then, strong political forces led thousands of angry citizens onto the streets of the predominantly Russian-speaking Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. The majority of people in the region, which is most closely intertwined with Russia, did not think much of Kiev’s desire for independence. The activists were supported by the Soviet secret service and the Communist Party from Moscow.

When oligarchs bought up the factories and plants in the industrial region after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they exploited them mercilessly. They blamed Kyiv for the consequences – hyperinflation, the massive impoverishment of the population and the rapid increase in inflation.

They consistently spread the narrative that the hard-working people of Donbass fed the rest of Ukraine and instead of gratitude only experienced harassment. At the same time they evoked in the people the old longing for a truly proletarian state.

In 2004, after the victory of pro-European former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, the Kremlin took on the task of deepening social divisions in the neighboring country. From then on, Moscow’s understandable fear that Ukraine might leave the Russian sphere of influence became the driving force behind this work. Moscow’s envoys managed to turn Donbass into the center of the Ukrainian counter-revolution.

There was neither a lack of money nor a lack of staff: dozens of deputies from the ruling party United Russia, NGOs funded by the Kremlin and think tanks shared with the eastern Ukrainians their concerns about their autonomy, the fate of the endangered Russian language and “traditional values”.

At a congress of the elite of the Russian-speaking southeast of the country and guests from Moscow in Severodonetsk, which is now largely destroyed, the chairman of the Donetsk regional council, Boris Kolesnikov, called for the founding of a “new southeastern state” to thunderous applause in November 2004. Kharkiv was envisaged as the future capital of the southeastern federation. The new state’s borders were to extend west to the Russian-speaking area around the city.

While slogans like “Ukraine is Europe” were being chanted in Kyiv, a whole generation of voters in Donetsk grew up who had not seen the USSR but longed for it. In the Donbass, this patriotic education also included popular military reenactment games held for amateur historians and military enthusiasts under the auspices of the Luhansk region, recreating battles in the region.

With the outbreak of the first Donbass conflict, it was not least yesterday’s reenactors who made themselves available in 2014 as voluntary reservists for the partisan units against the Ukrainian army.

More Handelsblatt articles on the situation in Donbass

Only a minority of those who were members of patriotic associations and parties in the pre-war years were given leadership positions in the Kremlin-created Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. They were either driven out of the boardroom by Moscow’s henchmen or lost their positions – and sometimes their lives – as a result of local power struggles.

Instead of the dreamed-up small version of an ideal USSR, the people of Donbass got two criminal quasi-states, completely fed by Moscow, with no chance of development and no connection to the outside world. The war unleashed by Putin was only the resolution of the tragedy.

Part of the blame for all the pre-war events, of course, lies with the Ukrainian government. A kleptocracy, rampant corruption, a weak economy and a sometimes condescending attitude towards the east of the country – all this could hardly serve as an alternative for Donbass residents to tie up with Russia.
But the main responsibility – above all for themselves – still lies with the people of Donbass. Lacking the will to change anything on the ground, it will now be the Kremlin that gets its way.
Incidentally, this lack of responsibility for one’s own future also applies to the great Russia. Looking at the indifference and apathy with which its citizens follow Putin’s terror, a bitter joke from the beginning of the year comes to mind: It’s not Russia that occupies the Donbass – it’s the Donbass that occupies Russia.

More: Two Russian propaganda heroes become critics of the Ukraine war

The Russian journalist Konstantin Goldenzweig writes the weekly column “Russian Impressions” for the Handelsblatt. The 39-year-old was a correspondent in Germany for various Russian TV stations from 2010 to 2020. He recently worked at Dozhd, the last independent Russian TV station, until it had to shut down. In March 2022 he fled Moscow to continue working in Georgia – like many of his Russian colleagues. He now lives in Berlin.