Donbas Conflict: How Russia’s Trojan Horse Failed and Forced Moscow to Alter Its Strategy

Remy Maduit | Authors published

Donbas Conflict
How Russia’s Trojan Horse Failed and Forced Moscow to Alter Its Strategy

Adam Potočňák is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies, University of Defence, Brno-City, Czech Republic.
Miroslav Mareš is a Professor of Polilical Science at Masaryk University in Brno-City, Czech Republic.

In the regions left over from the breakup of the Soviet Union, there remained many unresolved ethnic and political disputes that at some point escalated into armed conflicts. These “frozen conflicts” have spawned several self-proclaimed de facto state entities that are not internationally recognized or only partially recognized. Direct or indirect military involvement and peacekeeping management by the Russian Federation have played an important role in all of them. In pursuit of its geopolitical goals, Russia has reacted to the existence of de facto state entities in its geographical vicinity with selective revisionism using three different strategic approaches: (1) informal recognition of independence (meaning active assistance in maintaining their existence and quasi-independence but without de jure recognition); (2) formal recognition of independence; and (3) coercive incorporation. We can consider all the de facto states qualifying for the first or second categories of Russian protectorates—entities that would be incapable of political survival without active and multi-layered Russian political, economic, and security backing. The current Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) are products of the conflict in Donbas and the Russian Federation has formally recognized the most recent examples of states. However, we argue that recognizing their independence was Russia’s “Plan B,” enacted after the failure of its original Trojan Horse strategy, the strategic uniqueness of which lies in the way Moscow responded to the emergence of the DNR and LNR.

Research Design and Research Questions

This article is a single case study interpreting a particular case as being distinct from previous theoretical assumptions. It relies on an extensive apparatus of secondary sources, such as peer-reviewed monographs and articles, and tertiary sources, such as analyses and media sources. Its main task is to provide a conclusive answer to a primary research question: How did Russia’s strategic approach to the conflict in Donbas and the de facto states it generated (DNR and LNR) differ from other post-Soviet area frozen conflicts? Assuming that the conflict in Donbas and the strategic approach to the DNR and LNR sources represent a unique example, we continue by answering the additional research question: Why and how did Russia’s new strategy fail? We divide the following text into four sections. The first provides a theoretical framework for analyzing de facto states and Russian protectorates within the post-Soviet area. It also briefly summarizes earlier research that provided a rationale for distinguishing between the first and second generations of conflicts within the post-Soviet space. The three following sections represent the empirical-analytical core of the article and provide conclusive answers to each research question. We argue in the second section that Russia did not aim to pursue one of its three well-known strategies with the Donbas conflict but sought to adopt an entirely new approach, the one we call the “Trojan Horse strategy.” Owing to its name as the mythical wooden horse used by the Greeks as a ruse to overcome the defense of Troy [1], we assume that the strategy was based on the idea of using the DNR and LNR as vehicles for implanting a decisive Russian influence on Ukrainian security and foreign policy. The next section then explains how the Ukrainian counter-strategy caused the failure of the Trojan Horse strategy and brought the entire conflict in Donbas to a frozen status [2] that Russia broke by choosing one of the three “standard” strategic approaches and formally recognizing the independence of the DNR and LNR. We discuss the latest developments and their potential consequences in the final section and briefly summarize our arguments in the concluding part of the article.

Two Generations of Frozen Conflicts in Former Soviet Countries and Russia’s Selective Revisionism

The phenomenon of frozen and freezing conflicts within the post-Soviet space is a topic that has been studied extensively, with a whole array of academic and empirical books, articles, and studies written on the topic. [3] However, since this phenomenon is not the primary subject of this article, we adopt a rather minimalist but sufficient theoretical definition of a frozen conflict. We consider a frozen conflict to be a conflict that has demonstrated (by its quality and dynamics) that its active, armed phase has ended, but that the conflict also lacks any viable perspective on finding a political resolution to its fundamental causes.

The creation of a de facto state (or quasi-state often accompanies these conflicts)—a state-like entity possessing territory with a permanent population and an apparatus to administer local political and economic relations. However, these entities usually lack general international recognition, for which they persistently strive. [4] Lasting and comprehensive support often guarantees the existence and survival of a de facto state from a third party, usually a neighboring power—a patron that lends the de facto state political, military, and economic assistance. In exchange, the de facto states serve as foreign-policy tools for their patrons, usually for building pressure and influence over their parent state—the one from which the de facto state seceded. [5] Entities like the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), the Republic of Transnistria, the Republic of Abkhazia, and the Republic of South Ossetia qualify as pure examples of de facto states within the post-Soviet space, all of them owing to their limited sovereignty to Russia. [6]

Considering the many frozen conflicts on its doorstep, we perceive Russia as a master of creating and strategically using them. [7] Fearing that countries of the former USSR would integrate into Western political structures, Moscow has fueled and used several ethnopolitical [8] conflicts to tie these states more firmly to its sphere of paramount influence. [9] Andrei Kazantsev, Peter Rutland, Maria M. Medvedeva, and Ivan A. Safranchuk have argued that the genesis of these conflicts, the de facto states they spawned, and Russia’s strategic approaches to them should be divided into two different generations. [10] The first encompasses the era of the late Soviet Union and the first half of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency (roughly 1988–1994), when all these ethnopolitical conflicts gradually emerged, escalated, culminated, and froze. The origins of these processes lay mainly in defective Soviet ethnic federalism [11], which proved unable to settle ethnic and territorial disputes definitively and sustainably. Russia’s political weakness and fatal inability to establish effective peacekeeping mechanisms resulted in freezing the conflicts without resolving their primary causes. The second generation occurred during Vladimir Putin’s and Dmitry Medvedev’s presidencies, during which some conflicts became instruments of Russia’s strategy in geopolitical confrontation with the West. August 2008 Russian–Georgian War is seen as a point of transformation between the first and second generations, with the later conflicts in Crimea and Donbas representing the first examples of purely second-generation-nature conflicts. [12]

Building on the research by Kazantsev et al. [13], we argue that with the second generation of frozen conflicts, Russia’s peculiar “selective revisionism” came to the fore. [14] It manifested itself in Moscow’s use of three different strategic approaches to the emerging de facto states. [15] The first one—informal recognition of independence—has been applied to Transnistria, thus continuing the practice established in the 1990s. Russia’s engagement in the conflict on the separatists’ side resulted more from spontaneous developments and unpredictable coincidences than from a long-term contingency plan. [16] Once engaged, Russia took advantage of maintaining its military presence in the region and keeping Moldova out of Western political integration. [17] From the Russian perspective, the existence of Transnistria as an informally recognized de facto state is assured predominantly by the lack of other feasible strategic alternatives. [18]

Russia applied the same strategic approach to Abkhazia and South Ossetia until August 2008, when it justified its military intervention in Georgia as being necessary to protect the local populations (almost all Russian passport holders) against alleged genocide by the Georgian army. [19] This time, Moscow preferred offic[ial recognition of Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence to punish Georgia for Tbilisi’s audacity to lean West. The formal recognition of Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence allowed Mo [scow to sec [ure its political and military positions in the South Caucasus and halt NATO expansion. Despite enjoying formal “independence,” however, both entities are mere by-products of Russia’s great-power politics in the 200 [0s—actual protectorates, unable to survive independently. Even though Moscow has supported them consistently, it may still desire to reconcile with Georgia [ [20], which most likely explains its staunch unwillingness to incorporate South Ossetia into the Russian Federation, despite repeated requests from Tskhinvali, or to allow Abkhazia to develop genuine sovereignty. [21] So far, the most Moscow has done to please Sukhumi and Tskhinvali is to allow limited political and economic integration [22] and creeping expansion of their territories at the expense of Georgia proper [23]—the so-called “borderization” process. [24]

The last strategic approach—coercive incorporation—has been applied to two de facto states, one during the first generation of the frozen conflicts (Chechnya) and the other during the second generation (Crimea). With Chechnya, the war-ruined, institutionally weak, impoverished, lawless, clannish, and eventually failed the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria enjoyed de facto independence from 1996 to 1999. As neither Russia nor any other state officially recognized it, however, its very existence violated Russian constitutional law and threatened further disintegration of the Federation.[25] Moscow could not tolerate such a situation for an extended period, and so, after the outbreak of the second Chechen war in August 1999, it resolved the conflict by the violent (re)integration of a restive Caucasian province into the federal structure. It succeeded because Grozny lacked a strong patron state, a crucial element for all de facto states’ survival and one that all post-Soviet de facto states enjoy.[26] Successful “Chechenization” of the conflict also benefited Russia, although it eventually resulted in Ramzan Kadyrov’s despotic rule in the current autonomous Republic of Chechnya.[27]

The coercive incorporation of Crimea is a different case. It is correctly referred to as an annexation, an act of forcible acquisition of one state’s territory by another.[28] The Kremlin first helped to stage an anti-Kyiv putsch to cover its military occupation of the peninsula, invoking its responsibility to protect the local Russian-speaking population against oppressive, bellicose, and West-serving Ukrainian “nationalists,” “anti-Semites,” and “fascists” who had seized power in Kyiv.[29] It then organized a rigged local plebiscite that delivered the expected Soviet-style result in favor of incorporation[30] and promptly accepted the one-day-old “independent” Republic of Crimea’s formal request for integration into the Russian Federation.[31] Aside from the existing historical sentiments as well as the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural affiliations of Crimea to Russia, geopolitical calculations played a significant part in Moscow’s decision-making on the fate of the strategically immensely important peninsula[32]. The hypothetical notion of Ukraine becoming a member state of the European Union (EU) and NATO is so unacceptable to Russia that the Kremlin took the risk of challenging Ukraine by hitting it at its most vulnerable spot.[33]

Regardless of various legal and rhetorical exercises formally justifying Moscow’s conduct, the current Russian leadership seems to be consistent in its policies on post-Soviet conflicts, since Russian geostrategic interests and long-term intentions always drive them. Moscow could not allow Chechen separatists to succeed and risk further disintegration of the Federation, just as it could not accept letting Moldova, Georgia, or Ukraine leave its self-proclaimed “sphere of privileged influence.” Also, regardless of the strategy applied to various de facto states, the basic principle of Russia’s relations with them remains the same. As thoroughly demonstrated further in the examples of the DNR and LNR, these entities play the role of mere puppets whose future is entirely manipulable by Russia. Being formally recognized by Moscow or not, all post-Soviet de facto states serve their patron’s current interest in keeping their respective ethnopolitical conflicts frozen, with the Kremlin having the final say in their resolution. Should more favorable circumstances occur, Russia would flexibly adjust its policy accordingly. Both informal[34] and formal recognition of independence are politically and symbolically significant acts[35], but they are nevertheless reversible; withdrawal of an informal recognition is particularly easy and may happen at literally any moment and without high political and diplomatic costs. By contrast, incorporation (whether in the form of annexation or re-integration) is not; it is always perceived as final, definite, unchangeable, and unnegotiable for a whole array of strategic and political reasons. Here lies the explanation for Russia’s use of coercive incorporation, the most overt method, only in the cases of Chechnya and Crimea.[36] Although these conflicts differ in their geopolitical context, legal perspective, and disputed territory, their main essence (the threat of the Federation’s disintegration, or an imminent threat of losing a geopolitically critical territory) mattered so much that the Kremlin opted for definitive and irreversible resolution.[37]

Regardless of Russia’s selective revisionism methods, Czech scholars Tomáš Hoch and Vincenc Kopeček argue that there are only three possible ways a frozen conflict that has generated a de facto state may end. The de facto state may: (1) be re-integrated into its parent state (the cases of Gagauzia in Moldova, Adjara in Georgia, and Chechnya in Russia); (2) be absorbed by its patron (Crimea); or (3) eventually gain international recognition (Mongolia in 1961, after more than 50 years of existence).[38] The authors perceive the present existence of de facto states such as Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia as a temporary, transitional situation that sooner or later must end in one of the three definitive solutions.

Based on previous assumptions, we approach the Donbas conflict as a unique example among other frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space. We argue that the conflict represents an example of Russia’s hitherto unconsidered fourth strategic approach to such conflicts.[39] In this case, however, Russia’s strategic approach failed to bear the desired fruit. Instead, it generated a frozen conflict with a status quo that satisfied no one, such that Russia was forced to adjust its strategy in late February 2022.

The Trojan Horse: Russia’s Desired Fate for Donbas

Given Moscow’s desire to maintain leverage over Ukrainian foreign policy, the Kremlin did not repeat its strategic approach from Abkhazia, South Ossetia, or Crimea, as neither the formal recognition of independence nor the outright incorporation of the DNR and LNR would serve Kremlin’s strategic interest. If Moscow were to follow the scenario from the Transcaucasus, it would have to assume responsibility for consolidating two more poor protectorates.[40] Nor did Russia envision the outright and immediate incorporation of the self-proclaimed republics in Donbas[41], by contrast to Crimea; should Moscow have desired to incorporate them, it had countless opportunities during the hot phase of the armed conflict in 2014. On the contrary, Russia did not make any territorial demands regarding Donbas, and in fact, Moscow itself was initially caught off guard by the developments there, which it did not expect.[42] The separatists’ immediate calls for unification with Russia were ignored.[43] Only after the initial successes of the Ukrainian Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) in the spring and summer of 2014 did Russia decide to flood the east of Ukraine with weapons and “volunteers,” and only when this proved insufficient did Moscow opt for its “deniable” military invasion in August 2014.[44] By saving what was left of the “Novorossiia” project, Russia turned DNR and LNR into crippled protectorates, the direct ramifications of an artificially induced and partially Moscow-manufactured conflict.[45] Nevertheless, the territory of Donbas, with its two self-proclaimed republics, did not lose significance as a political unit, and Russia quickly adjusted its strategy. First, it forced the replacement of a whole array of insurgency instigators and relatively autonomous local elites like Aleksandr Borodai, Valerii Bolotov, Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, and Igor Bezler with more reliable, completely Moscow-controlled figures.[46] Second, it did its best to install itself in the position of “peace mediator” in the Normandy format, pretending it was not a party to the conflict—although it had been the whole time.[47] Third, Russian diplomats even managed to “smuggle” representatives of the DNR and LNR into the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG, originally comprising only Russia, Ukraine, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe [OSCE]). By doing so, Moscow succeeded in putting its pawns on par with the sovereign Ukrainian authorities.[48]

In the subsequently negotiated Minsk I and Minsk II Peace Protocols[49], Russia “generously” pledged to enable Kyiv to restore its formal authority over Donbas, but with significantly less political power.[50] The Kremlin initially demanded that Ukraine adopt broad constitutional reforms, anchor an “eternal” neutrality clause to the new constitution, and grant DNR and LNR special status and extraordinary powers, including the right to sign separate “interstate” agreements.[51] The Russian reasoning for demanding such far-reaching concessions is obvious. Such an arrangement would render Moscow several vital advantages: the territory of the DNR and LNR would physically separate the rest of Ukraine from the core of the Russian state[52] while simultaneously providing Russia with additional transport routes to Crimea. Moreover, thanks to their having the right to negotiate and conclude “international” agreements, no Ukrainian (let alone foreign) security forces would be allowed to enter the DNR or LNR, while for their Russian counterparts, the doors would be wide open. Political elites of the separatist regions would be given a deciding say in Ukrainian foreign policy, assuring that the consequently weakened central government in Kyiv would never again deviate from Moscow’s power orbit.[53] And if it did, the Kremlin would have several tools to escalate the conflict anytime it wanted. [54]

The most prominent of these would be the well-known narrative of the necessity of protecting a threatened Russian-speaking minority and compatriots. Since President Putin does not consider Ukraine to be a fully independent state and perceives the Ukrainian nation to be nothing but a branch of the Russian nation [55], Moscow fully applies its principle of protecting compatriots living abroad [56] to the citizens of DNR and LNR. It also continues with the deliberate manufacturing of “protection-worthy” Russian minorities through the passportization of locals. [57] From April 2019, when a presidential decree launched a simplified procedure for inhabitants of the DNR and LNR to obtain Russian citizenship, until late January 2022, around 630,000 people from Donbas got it. [58] Should Moscow ever bother to take the wishes of these people into account, surveys conducted in December 2016 and March 2019 indicated that a simple majority of DPR and LPR inhabitants (35 percent and 31 percent, respectively) would prefer the entire Donbas to have a special status within a decentralized Ukraine. [59] Annexation by Russia with a similarly special status placed second with support from 33 percent of inhabitants in 2016 and 27 percent in 2019. [60]

Ukrainian Response and a Consequential Stalemate

Had Russia succeeded with its Trojan Horse strategy, it would have scored a nearly absolute strategic victory in the whole conflict. It could also have succeeded in one of the three ways the theory poses for all de facto states: it would have achieved the reincorporation of DNR and LNR back into Ukraine, but extraordinarily. If Ukraine had played out according to the “Moscow accords,” it would have effectively ceased to exist as a sovereign and independent state. [61] Instead, however, the Ukrainian government cunningly saw through Russia’s intentions with the Trojan Horse, did everything it could to thwart them, and eventually succeeded. Several reasons explain how this was possible.

First, Ukraine successfully objected to the conditions of the Minsk II Peace Protocol that most favored the DNR and LNR; thus, the provisions for an “eternal neutrality” clause or the right of the DNR and LNR to sign “interstate” agreements did not make it into the final version of the peace protocol. Second, the parties to Minsk II disagreed on priorities and procedures once the document was signed. Ukraine insisted on fulfilling the military clauses of the agreement first[62], while Moscow pushed Kyiv to implementation of the political clauses. [63] Third, after suffering painful military defeats from the Russian army in the autumn of 2014 and spring of 2015, then-president Petro Poroshenko embarked on a strategy of attrition, with the goal of fully re-integrating Donbas once Russia was sufficiently exhausted by Western sanctions and political pressure. [64] Instead of putting a neutrality clause into the Ukrainian constitution, Poroshenko helped to abandon Ukraine’s neutrality. Under his auspices, the constitution was amended with a provision committing the country to pursue NATO and EU membership as a strategic priority [65], and it was his signature that confirmed Ukraine’s accession to the Deep and Comprehensive Free-Trade Agreement (DCFTA) as well as an Association Treaty with the EU in 2014. [66] His successor, current president Volodymyr Zelensky, follows the same path on NATO and the EU policies [67] and enjoys solid political support and military assistance from the EU and the United States. [68]

Tellingly, Zelenskyy originally planned to pursue a different strategy. He campaigned with a pledge to reach a political solution to the conflict, and upon his election in May 2019, he abandoned Poroshenko’s sharp nationalist-populist rhetoric, embarking on a more compromising course. In October 2019, Zelenskyy agreed to abide by a simplified version of the Minsk II Peace Protocol, the so-called “Steinmeier formula,” [69], and in March 2020 even agreed to direct negotiations with DNR and LNR representatives. [70] As a result, he suffered a severe political backlash [71] and his ratings fell significantly [72], especially since the symbolic gestures of goodwill delivered no practical political results. [73] The Ukrainian government refused to hold local elections unless it regained complete control of the lost parts of the Russo–Ukrainian border, while a significant portion of the Ukrainian public perceived fulfilling Minsk II as a betrayal of national interests and insisted on a fundamental renegotiation of the document. [74] Ultimately, the massive concentration of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine in the spring of 2021 forced Zelenskyy to give up any residual illusions and harden his policies toward Russia and the Donbas conflict, giving no chance for significant concessions from the Ukrainian side. [75]

Thus, both sides’ non-compliance with the Minsk II Peace Protocol generated political rather than legal consequences and unwittingly contributed to the current zero-sum-game impasse. Ukraine was not willing to accept peace at any cost, while Russia was left with keeping two economically decrepit and politically non-viable entities alive [76] while being itself a “victim” of Western economic sanctions. [77] Even though Moscow had some tactical victories and achieved some short-term goals, its Trojan Horse strategy resembles a gallery of blunders and outright failures from a long-term perspective.

First, Kyiv lost control over a part of its territory, but they did not compromise entirely Ukrainian sovereignty and political independence and irreparably. The Kremlin did not prevent Ukraine from pursuing Western integration. Instead, Ukraine anchored a Western geopolitical orientation in its constitution, signed significant agreements with the EU, and cooperated with NATO in many practical ways. In contrast, the notion of Ukrainian membership in a Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) that Moscow pursued so vigorously before 2014 is pure phantasmagoria. Equally minimal is the chance that openly pro-Russian candidates would gain the majority in the Ukrainian parliament or win a presidential election. [78] Paradoxically, by seizing Crimea and intervening in the military conflict in Donbas, Russia helped to consolidate the modern Ukrainian nation and its civic consciousness—a goal that Ukraine could not achieve in the time since the dissolution of the USSR. [79]

Second, Russia failed to “smuggle” its Trojan Horse back into a “new,” constitutionally decentralized Ukraine and compel Kyiv elites to accept Donbas representatives as their equal peers. The Ukrainian government carried out a massive decentralization reform and even held local elections for newly established territorial administrations in October 2020. However, these developments had nothing to do with the Minsk II provisions or Russian ideas for Ukrainian decentralization. The reform did not affect Donbas, let alone guarantee any special status to DNR and LNR. [80] Kyiv thus remained faithful to the diction of the Reintegration Law of 2018, which does not presuppose any special treatment for the regions, but, on the contrary, envisions their full re-integration once the circumstances are more favorable. [81]

Third, instead of wheeling its DNR/LNR Trojan Horse back into Ukraine and gaining a deciding influence, it left Russia subsidizing two dependent de facto states that are crippled by violence, institutional weakness, a poor economy, and chronic criminality. [82] As Russia finds itself under Western sanctions while being engaged all around the post-Soviet space in Europe, and an array of African and some Latin American countries, it may desire to save priceless resources wherever it can. [83]

Finally, Moscow encountered unexpected but understandable resistance from the quickly rotating political and military leaders of the DNR and LNR, whose legitimacy would not exist without Russia’s will. These persons justifiably fear prosecution and punishment should Donbas return to Kyiv’s control. Therefore, they firmly insist on official recognition or incorporation into the Russian Federation—demands that Moscow did not appear to be planning to meet, at least until February 2022. [84] Meanwhile, a critical portion of the remaining local population (roughly three million) has not turned into a passionately Russia-supporting mass. Although hundreds of thousands of them have applied for a Russian passport (mainly for practical reasons), the DNR and LNR populations have mostly been apathetic, occasionally expressing their disillusionment, disappointment, and even feelings of abandonment or betrayal. [85]

Moscow’s Adjustments and Latest Developments

The frozen conflict in Donbas ended up in an actual paradox. Even though it falls entirely into the second (geopolitically driven) generation of frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space, it delivered the same stalemate result as the first-generation ethnopolitical conflicts of the 1990s. It demonstrated that the problem of insufficient (or rather non-existent) conflict-resolution, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding mechanisms persists within post-Soviet territorial and mental spheres regardless of time, place, and geopolitical considerations. Disappointed with the initial failure of the Trojan Horse strategy, Moscow has adjusted its strategy in several ways since 2014/2015. At the beginning of 2020, Vladislav Surkov (a hardliner, proponent of “Novorossiia,” and mastermind behind the Russian interpretation of the Minsk II Peace Protocol) was replaced in the position of chief Kremlin curator of the Donbas with the long-time political official Dmitry Kozak. [86] A pragmatist, Kozak was the principal architect of existing Moldova–Transnistria–Russia relationship and is known for seeing the frozen conflicts and de facto states through economic relations. Based on that, some pundits concluded that President Putin might have tasked Kozak with breaking the impasse of the Donbas frozen conflict in a similar way. [87] A significant impetus for a new strategic approach was delivered later that year by the Russia-negotiated settlement of the second Nagorno-Karabakh war, which Moscow sells to the world as its genuine geopolitical success. Some influential voices within the Russian elite immediately indicated that Kozak should strive for similar results in Donbas. [88]

However, Kozak’s efforts failed to deliver the desired results in 2020 and 2021. In late autumn 2021, Russia adjusted its strategy, returning to its demanding, pressuring, threatening, and even aggressive face. Between November 2021 and February 2022, Russia amassed some 200,000 troops along the Russian–Ukrainian borders, including Crimea, and forced the United States and NATO to sit down for a series of direct talks on security guarantees and the design of future security architecture in Europe. As for Ukraine and Donbas, Russia’s intentions remained blurred for a more extended period. Experts believed Russia was pursuing one of two options: either compelling Kyiv to implement the political clauses of the Minsk II Peace Protocol and grant DNR and LNR broad autonomy (thus reviving its original Trojan Horse strategy) [89], or setting the ground for formal recognition of DNR and LNR independence, followed by deploying Russian troops on their territories. [90]

The second option proved to be the one chosen on February 21, 2022, when Russia formally recognized the independence of the DNR and LNR and immediately sent its troops to their territories. This move proved Moscow had completely abandoned the original Trojan Horse strategy, thus killing the entire Minsk peace process and enacting one of its already “tested” strategic approaches. Unfortunately, the Russian Federation then went a long way further and launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, sparking the most significant security crisis in Europe since the end of World War II. At the time of completion of this article (first half of April 2022), the war was entering its second phase, with Russian forces concentrating on advances in eastern and southern Ukraine after they failed to conquer Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other population centers. Therefore, it was impossible to draw any more or less probable scenarios for further developments and the future of the two, now partially recognized, people’s republics in Donbas, beyond stating two preliminary conclusions. First, the Trojan Horse strategy was an original but ultimately unsuccessful Russian attempt to approach a specific frozen conflict and the two de facto states with a new, hitherto unknown, strategic approach. Second, the case of Donbas confirmed the presumption by Kopeček and Hoch that any de facto state eventually ends up being reincorporated into its maternal state, being annexed by its patron, or gaining (at least partial) international recognition.

Conclusion

The article first reflects the theory developed by Kazanstev, Rutland, Medvedeva, and Safranchuk that there are two different generations of frozen conflicts within the post-Soviet space. On this basis, the authors define three strategic approaches applied by Russia in its “selective revisionism” as a response to the de facto states generated by these conflicts: informal recognition of independence; formal recognition of independence; and coercive incorporation. It further acknowledges theoretical assumptions planned by Kopeček and Hoch that all such de facto states must end up in one of three ways: re-incorporated into their parent states; annexed by the patron state, or gaining international recognition.

Our central argument says that the strategic approach Russia took toward the conflict in the Donbas originally represented a particular exception. Based on the evidence, we assume that Moscow’s original strategic intention with the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics substantively differed from the previous three strategies. We argue that Russia’s original plan, the one that Moscow even anchored in the Minsk II Peace Protocol, was to force Ukraine to federalize and grant the two de facto state entities an unprecedentedly broad autonomy. Because of their absolute political and economic dependence on Russia, together with the personal ties of the Donbas elite to the Kremlin, Russia could then use these entities as proxies to influence Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy. This innovative strategic approach, which we refer to as the “Trojan Horse strategy,” failed because of Ukrainian counter-actions and its persistent non-compliance with the Minsk II provisions.

Against that backdrop, we also interpret the developments at the turn of 2021–2022 as strategic adjustments by Moscow that resulted in its abandoning of the Trojan Horse strategy and the entire Minsk II peace process, and instead of applying one of its known strategic approaches—formal recognition of DNR and LNR independence. However, the subsequent Russian invasion of Ukraine has made it impossible to draw any long-term and more detailed predictions or prospects on further developments in Donbas, thus opening up a space for further academic research on the topic once (hopefully) the war ends and political conflict deescalates.

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[9] Id.
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[42] President Putin himself first called on representatives of the self-proclaimed republics to postpone their “independence plebiscites” and later expressed his hope that their results would be implemented peacefully (Robinson 2016).
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