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

New Wild Fields: How the Russian War Leads to the Demodernization of Ukraine’s Occupied Territories

“…Artificiality is understood as a third party intensifying the tension and escalating the violence between two parties engaged in a dispute, which until then had no insoluble contradictions, thus constructing a conflict. Instrumentality is understood as the use of a constructed conflict as leverage on a country's domestic and foreign policy (Malyarenko and Wolff 2018;Potočňák and Mares 2022). The notion of artificiality and instrumentality is particularly true in relation to the conflict in the Donbas, which is frequently portrayed as a separatist conflict, despite the presence of anti-Maidan attitudes and grievances of the local population that would not have been possible without the participation of Russian mercenaries (Bukkvoll 2015;Malyarenko and Galbreath 2016;Marten 2019).…”

Rescaling the legal dimensions of grey zones: Evidence from Ukraine

“…In this context, Crimea looked like a frozen conflict at first glance. But this would be true only if one ignores that Russia invested in constructing and orchestrating the Donbas conflict (see, for example, Freedman, 2019 on this matter) as a direct consequence of its Crimean occupation, aiming to change the agenda and create leverage over Ukrainian internal and external policy (Malyarenko & Wolff, 2018; Potočňák & Mares, 2022). Even supporters of narratives of non‐international armed conflict (NIAC) in Donbas acknowledge that the Russian military support the self‐proclaimed DPR/LPR (Katchanovski, 2016; Matveeva, 2022), which falls under the well‐developed jus ad bellum concepts of directing, controlling, and providing a safe haven for terrorists (Tams, 2009, p. 385).…”

“…At the same time, in 2014–2021, Russia formally declared that territories of the self‐proclaimed DPR/LPR belonged to Ukraine, taking advantage of mediation in the conflict and channelling the attention of the international community on stopping violence in East Ukraine. That being said, Russia did not follow its declarations in practice and eventually abandoned them once the DPR/LPR lost their functions as ‘agenda changers’, ‘leverage’ or ‘trojan horses’ in relation to Ukraine (Mykhnenko, 2020; Potočňák & Mares, 2022). The Kremlin utilised the DPR/LPR for uniting separatist warlords and proxy militants under a single command (Koven, 2021; Marten, 2019) and to that end, it developed quasi ‘political’ and ‘legislative’ systems that were even more repressive and authoritarian than the Russian system.…”

“…Therefore, according to the testimony of the former President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko (Walker, 2022), and the then international mediators Angela Merkel and François Hollande (Prouvost, 2022), the Minsk Agreements were signed not to fulfil but to buy time to strengthen Ukraine's military for potential war with Russia. In turn, Russia hoped to destabilise the pro‐Western political regime in Kyiv by demanding the implementation of the Minsk agreements and the reintegration of the self‐proclaimed DPR and LPR with Ukraine based on autonomy (Malyarenko & Wolff, 2018; Potočňák & Mares, 2022). During 2014–2022, external actors made several attempts to push the implementation of the Minsk agreements (the Morrel plan, the Steinmeier formula).…”

The Economic Impact of Russia’s Ukraine Conflict on the EU Fuel Markets

“…Also, the academic interest is focused on the pre-involvement era (Alim 2020;Götz, 2016), as well as the Crimean crisis (Biersack and O'Lear, 2014;Blockmans, 2015). Concerning Russia's strategic approach in the battle of Donbas, Potočňák and Mares (2022) in their article underline that it was based on the "Trojan Horse strategy," which has not previously been implemented. Also, Götz and Staun (2022) deal with Russia's strategy, but from a different perspective.…”