ABSTRACT
There was no time in the conflict when anyone would have been overwhelmed by the thought that Russia might be supporting ethnic Russian separatists in the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, now self-declared independent republics. Russia was immediately adjacent to these regions and shared a long border with Ukraine. Russia and Eastern Ukraine shared strong cultural affinity. The ethnic Russians of Eastern Ukraine had reason to dread a regime catapulted into existence by anti-Russian forces of Western Ukraine, a regime with little political support in the east, and that indulged aggressive rhetoric against ethnic Russians, and the Russian language and culture while glorifying an extreme nationalist perspective on Ukrainian culture. In the midst of fighting between Ukraine and the separatists, Ukraine turned its back on the independent republics, ceasing all financial support, including pensions and social security payments. There was still a measure of sympathy in the east, especially among older generations, for the culture and security of the former Soviet Union. The people of Eastern Ukraine at many points in this conflict were desperate for food, shelter and protection from aggressive Ukrainian shelling of civilian populations. So it was not so much a case of wondering whether Russia would invade eastern Donbass as a question of why on earth would it not. The reality, however, was more complicated. Despite popular support for Russian annexation in Crimea, this was less the case in eastern Donbass where many preferred greater autonomy within an over-centralized Ukraine to annexation by Russia. Knowing this, and not wanting to exacerbate an international crisis with a measure that would be less defensible in international law than the case of Crimea, Russia proceeded delicately on the eastern Donbass question. It resisted talk of annexation; it tried to discourage the voting that led to the people’s republics and later sought to postpone local elections there until after completion of the process of constitutional reform in Ukraine that had been demanded by the Minsk II agreement. The West and WMM stoked up fears of a full-scale Russian invasion of eastern Donbass that never took place, and NATO leaders persisted in such talk well into 2015, even to the point of alienating key European allies who grew tired of evidence-free fear-mongering. In the absence of an invasion, Ukraine and NATO searched desperately for evidence of lower levels of Russian
involvement, from the presence of Russian military and volunteers, to Russian military equipment and other forms of assistance. As inevitable as these might have been, the actual evidence was generally less impressive than the claims.
