The Separatist War in Donbas: A Violent Break-up of Ukraine?^†

^†An earlier version of this paper was presented at a Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies conference in Edmonton in October 2014.

ABSTRACT

Ukraine previously experienced significant regional political divisions, including separatism in Crimea and Donbas. However, in contrast to post-communist countries such as Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and former Yugoslavia, prior to 2014 Ukraine was able to avoid a war and a break-up. This study examines the role of separatists, the Yanukovych government, the Maidan opposition and the Maidan government, far-right organizations, Russia, the US, and the EU in the conflict in Donbas. It uses a specially commissioned survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in 2014 to analyse public support for separatism in Donbas, compared to other regions of Ukraine, and the major factors which affect such support. It concludes that all these actors contributed in various ways to the conflict in Donbas, which involved both a civil war and a direct Russian military intervention since August 2014. The study links this conflict to the ‘Euromaidan’, specifically, the government overthrow by means of the Maidan massacre, and the secession and Russia's annexation of Crimea. The KIIS survey shows that support for separatism is much stronger in Donbas compared to other regions, with the exception of Crimea, and that the break-up of Ukraine is unlikely to extend to its other parts.

KEYWORDS:

• Ukraine
• Russia
• conflict
• Donbas
• separatism
• public opinion

ORCID

Ivan Katchanovski http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8266-9987

Notes

^† An earlier version of this paper was presented at a Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies conference in Edmonton in October 2014.

1 Voting preference for Solidarity actually had a negative effect on pro-separatist attitudes (see Table 4). The attitudes towards separatism are measured on a scale from 1 to 3, with 1 indicating support for preservation of the respondents’ region in unitary Ukraine with current or expanded powers of regions, 2 defining support for federal Ukraine with significant regional autonomy, and 3 expressing support for secession of their region from Ukraine and joining another state or becoming independent.