What will happen to Mariupol ?: How Russia is secretly annexing Donbass

What will happen to Mariupol?
How Russia is secretly annexing the Donbass

By Denis Trubetskoy, Kiev

As the world watches the Russian march on the Ukrainian border, Russia continues its silent annexation of the separatist areas in eastern Ukraine. In the future, Moscow wants to achieve the economic viability of the so-called People’s Republics, which is the Kremlin’s sights on the port city of Mariupol.

Since the end of October, the world has been looking at the Ukrainian-Russian border again. According to the Ukrainian military reconnaissance, around 90,000 Russian soldiers are said to be near the border. For an attack in January 2022, according to the Washington Post, Russia could increase its troops to around 175,000 men. But while the media is primarily about preventing a direct Russian invasion of Ukraine, another problem has been simmering for months. Namely the silent annexation by the Kremlin of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which are controlled by pro-Russian separatists.

The Ukrainian army and the separatists supported by Moscow have been fighting for the eastern Ukrainian industrial area of ​​Donbass since spring 2014. According to UN estimates, more than 13,000 people were killed. The so-called People’s Republics control only a third of the region in terms of area, but the most important cities Donetsk and Luhansk. The Minsk peace agreement, passed in February 2015 with the help of Germany and France, is the only diplomatic basis for resolving the conflict and actually prescribes how the occupied territories are to be reintegrated into the Ukrainian state after local elections have been held.

The agreement is particularly unfavorable for Ukraine, which at the time was on the verge of a major military defeat. Because the local elections would take place before the handover of control of the Ukrainian-Russian border in Donbass to Kiev. The chances are good that the elections in an area not controlled by Ukraine will be won by pro-Russian politicians, who would then be given special rights with their own courts and their own people’s militia. This would mean that Moscow would no longer have to pay dearly for the People’s Republics – in 2020 the Ukrainian reintegration ministry spoke of 1.3 billion US dollars that Russia should spend annually on salaries in Donbass alone – but it would at the same time retain decisive influence over the region.

Actual bomb in April 2019

Despite the Ukrainian signature under the Minsk Agreement, these conditions are considered unfulfillable for Kiev. That is why Moscow has been accusing Kiev of failing to comply with the agreement for years. With his peace offensive at the beginning of his term of office, however, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, who took office in May 2019, tried to at least end the shooting on the front line. This resulted, among other things, in the surprisingly successful ceasefire in summer 2020, which, however, finally failed in spring due to the Russian troop deployment on the Ukrainian border.

However, Russia put the real bomb under the Donbass negotiations just a few days after Zelenskyi’s election victory in April 2019, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his intention to naturalize the residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics almost unconditionally. According to official Russian information, more than 600,000 residents of the separatist republics had already received a Russian passport in the summer of 2021. Around a third of them also took part in the Russian parliamentary elections in September. Although there were no actual polling stations in Donbass, the owners of the Russian passports were either allowed to vote on the Internet, or they were taken by bus and train to the neighboring Russian district of Rostov. In addition, some Donbass representatives ran for the Duma election.

This is only one step in the ever closer connection between the occupied territories and Russia. In June, the Russian entrepreneur Yevheny Yurtschenko, loyal to the system, took over the most important industrial companies in the self-proclaimed People’s Republics and increased salaries there. In his own words, Yurchenko now wants to invest more than the equivalent of 127 million euros in these companies next year. The takeover of other companies is not excluded.

Objective: statehood of the people’s republics

A new Putin decree followed in mid-November: Moscow opened the Russian market for goods from the People’s Republics. The companies from the occupied territory will also be allowed to participate regularly in state-run Russian tenders and will thus get even better conditions in Russia than companies from Belarus, although Minsk and Moscow are bound by a common union state. The creation of a common economic area between the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which is targeted by the end of the year, is also supposed to primarily serve the goal of adapting economic standards to those of Russia. In October, the border and customs controls between Donetsk and Luhansk were abolished.

There are also unconfirmed reports in the Ukrainian media that Russia plans to spend more than ten billion euros on salaries and pensions in the People’s Republics between 2022 and 2024. The idea behind it should be the adjustment of the income level to the Russian Rostov district. The so-called People’s Republics are thus increasingly becoming part of Russia, although direct annexation and acceptance into the Russian state remains unlikely for the time being. Because, at least on paper, Russia wants to stay in the Minsk Trial, even if its actions in Donbass are practically doomed to failure.

Moscow is concentrating on the future with the current status quo – with the clear intention of making the self-proclaimed People’s Republics more economically viable at some point through the current investments. But this is almost impossible without the important industrial and port city of Mariupol, still under Ukrainian control. And while the 175,000 soldiers mentioned by the Washington Post may not be enough for a full invasion of Ukraine, Mariupol of all people is an obvious Russian military target under a convenient pretext. Probably only when the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline receives its operating permit.

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