A great area in eastern Ukraine Donbas, that Russia is trying to overcome, has been at the centre of a war between Kyiv and pro-Russian rebels on the grounds that 2014.
The rebels took manage of approximately one-1/3 of the Donetsk and Lugansk areas which make up Donbas at the start of a conflict that had left 14,000 lifeless on both facets by the point Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
Moscow recognized the so-referred to as People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as unbiased states 3 days earlier than the invasion.
A month later, after failing to break through Ukraine’s defences in the north, Russia revised its goals, saying its aim is the “liberation” of the entire Donbas, which stretches south to the besieged city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.
Before 2014, the Donbas had a population of about 6.6 million but many residents have since fled, either to other parts of Ukraine or to Russia.
The Donbas encompasses an area about twice the size of Belgium on the border with Russia, which for centuries was controlled by members of the Ukrainian Cossack warrior caste and ethnic Tatars from the Crimea peninsula.
The economy of the Donbas took off after the discovery of coal in the 19th century.
During the Soviet era, Donbas miner Alexey Stakhanov became a poster boy for communism and a global symbol of productivity by using new tools to significantly boost mining output.
After World War II numerous Russian workers were sent to work in the Donbas, creating strong cultural and economic links with Russia that endure to this day.
President Vladimir Putin claims that they and their Russian-speaking descendants in Donetsk and Lugansk need to be protected from Ukrainian forces, whom he accuses of “genocide”.
Before the start of the rebellion in the Donbas, the city of Donetsk (formerly known as Stalino) was Ukraine’s main steel-producing centre.
Since 2014, the city of Kramatorsk, where a missile strike on a railway station left at least 57 people dead on April 8, has become the de facto capital of the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donbas.
The war between Ukraine and the separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk erupted after the 2014 ouster of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in a popular uprising in Kyiv and Moscow’s subsequent annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
The rebels proclaimed two independent republics after holding referendums that were not recognised by the international community.
Kyiv and the West say Russia instigated the conflict in eastern Ukraine, pouring fingers and troops across the border to reinforce the rebels.
Attempts with the aid of Germany and France to mediate a long-lasting resolution of the war failed, with Kyiv and the separatists accusing every other of violating a 2015 peace accord signed inside the Belarus capital Minsk.
