Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era.’’
When Ukraine became independent, it was ‘‘taken
away’’ from its ‘‘historical motherland,’’ resulting in
a disaster that culminated in Euromaidan. ‘‘West-
ern countries directly interfered in Ukraine’s
internal aff airs and supported the coup,’’ he wrote.
‘‘Step by step, Ukraine was dragged into a danger-
ous geopolitical game aimed at turning Ukraine
into a barrier between Europe and Russia.’’
The letter led some observers to wonder
whether Putin hasn’t so much directed events in
Donbas as allowed them to progress at the hands
of hard-liners in his orbit. That hard line may be
defi ned, 20 years into his reign, by the worldview
of Novorossiya. Originally a czarist term meaning
New Russia, it has been revived by Russian ultra-
nationalists to describe their project of reconsti-
tuting a Russian imperium.
Novorossiya is not about realpolitik. It is about
history and pride. And while it is unclear just how
committed Putin is to it, there is little question
that Novorossiya is now part of Russian policy.
Like the front line running down eastern Ukraine,
it is regional fact. In addition to Donbas and
Crimea, Russia has intervened in Georgia to prop
up the republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia
and in Moldova to establish the Pridnestrovian
Moldavian Republic, usually known as Trans-
nistria. In all, that is roughly 20,000 square miles
of Europe carved off three diff erent sovereignthe main reason was political. With Zelensky
growing unpopular, the judges worried the next
regime to take power in Ukraine might be anoth-
er tied to Moscow. They didn’t want to risk their
careers, never mind their lives.
Donbas off ers little to Russia, which does not
need the region’s coal or its sad vestiges of indus-
try. Presumably the Kremlin does not want the
burden of Donbas’s public-sector budgets or its
pensioners. Unlike Crimea, home to Russia’s Black
Sea Fleet, Donbas has no strategic value — except
as a platform for further menacing Ukraine — and
no beach resorts.
What, then, does Russia want with it? Putin’s
thinking has been so far removed from pub-
lic scrutiny that any answer to that question is
very conjectural. It depends on the drift of your
Kremlinology, which in turn depends on your pre-
sumptions about his power. Russia analysts who
are of the (prevailing) view that Putin approaches
omnipotence ask what his realpolitik long con in
Donbas can be. He’s always got one, their think-
ing goes. One possible explanation is electoral.
Though Putin refuses to acknowledge an offi cial
Russian role in Donbas, the region has added an
estimated 600,000 voters to the Russian rolls. If
the results of last fall’s elections are to be believed,
they support his United Russia party.
Those who class Putin with other world lead-
ers — that is, as a mortal navigating among rivals
— ask if Donbas doesn’t represent the rare mis-
calculation on his part. Euromaidan was a con-
venient pretext to invade Crimea, an idea long
contemplated in the Kremlin. The Donbas oper-
ation was probably more impulsive, and it has
met with a Ukrainian defi ance few in Russia, or
for that matter in Ukraine, would have predicted
in 2014. Russian intentions there have seemed to
evolve. Donbas has served variously as a bargain-
ing chip with Western powers, a cudgel to hold
over them, a hobbyhorse for the home audience
and an albatross. Seizing Crimea increased Putin’s
popularity hugely but only for a time. And while
his ratings get a bounce with every southernly
rattle of the saber, years of economic sanctions
have the reverse eff ect.
Shortly before I arrived in Donbas, a remark-
able open letter was published on the Kremlin
website in Russian and English. That it bore
Putin’s signature doesn’t mean he wrote it, but the
7,000-word letter did unfurl with the kind of par-
ty-congress loquacity this otherwise terse presi-
dent sometimes indulges. ‘‘On the Historical Unity
of Russians and Ukrainians’’ recounted the joint
histories of Russia and Ukraine from the ninth
century onward. Striking a conciliatory note, Putin
lamented Bolshevik crimes in Ukraine (nothing
of Stalin) and confessed that the war in Donbas
was ‘‘in my mind our great common misfortune
and tragedy.’’
He went on to link Ukrainian nationalism
to German fascism and to claim that ‘‘modern
states since Putin fi rst took national offi ce. A
form of Russian hybrid warfare was applied in
all of these places. In other former Soviet repub-
lics such as the Baltic States, Russia carries on a
relentless cyber war in an eff ort to hobble and
discredit their governments.
To the proponents of Novorossiya, as to the
Romanovs and the Bolsheviks and the Stalinists,
Ukrainian independence is a misnomer. There is
no distinct Ukrainian people or culture. There is
no Ukraine. There is only Russia.
In 2014 and 2015, Russia and Ukraine signed
the Minsk Protocols, which call for returning
Donbas to Ukraine. There is evidence that Putin
really wants that. But he insists the region take on
a semiautonomous form that Zelensky can’t abide.
Putin has not accepted Zelensky’s invitations to
negotiate outside the Minsk language. Instead,
twice in the last year, he has sent troops to the
Ukrainian border and spoken of war. Now it’s not
only Western Europe and the United States who
are pushing back. In the fall, Russia’s sometime ally
Turkey sent Kyiv a shipment of TB2 armed drones.
This month, Estonia pledged to provide Ukraine
with weapons. Days later, Russian and American
diplomats began formal talks to resolve the crisis
on the Ukrainian border. Ukraine was not invited.On Aug. 24, a parade in Kyiv marked the 30th
anniversary of Ukrainian (Continued on Page 49)