The Root Causes of the War in Ukraine, Or Why Russia Insists on the Donbas
by Nicolai N. Petro and Ted Snider | Nov 3, 2025 | 10 Comments
There has been a great deal of confusion about why it is so difficult to achieve a ceasefire, and why Russia insists on a comprehensive peace settlement that deals with “the root causes” of the crisis.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky now calls freezing the war along the current lines a “good compromise” for “a plan of ceasefire.” Russia, however, has always insisted that a ceasefire be declared only after “addressing the root causes of the war.”
Western media outlets often misrepresent those root causes as conquering Ukraine, and then turning on Europe in order to reestablish the Soviet Union (or the Russian empire). In fact, Russia has consistently said that the root causes are Ukraine’s abandonment of neutrality and non-alignment, its desire for nuclear weapons, and the ethnic and cultural suppression of its Russian-speaking citizens.
The current regime’s hyper-nationalistic vision for Ukraine stands in stark contrast to the pluralist vision that the Donbas and Crimea had been working toward since Ukraine’s independence. Threats to this pluralistic vision have long inspired rebellion against central authorities in Kiev. As early as 1992, the prospect of a centralized political system, and the suppression of Russian culture had already led Donbas and Crimea to demand a federal system, and even to flirt with reunification with Russia.
In March of 1994, 87.2% of Donetsk and 90.4% of Lugansk voted that Russian should be enshrined in the constitution as an official language of Ukraine. In 2004, a desire to live in a state that protected their culture and their rights, drove the Donbas region close to partition.
Thus, we see that, in an effort to maintain their cultural identity and local autonomy, local political leaders in this region have long sought the Russian intervention on their behalf, just as Russia, for its part, sought to provide that protection, and thereby enhance its influence in Ukraine.
From Russia’s perspective, that situation became desperate in the weeks just before the invasion, as Kiev ramped up its efforts to resolve the stand-off militarily. As Ruslan Khomchak, then the top military commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, put it in February 2021, plans to “ go on the offensive in urbanized localities” had been put in place in 2020, and the Ukrainian military was “now ready to begin,” though he warned that the costs of attacking needed to be carefully assessed.
To prepare Ukrainian society for the implementation of this ” Croatian Scenario” to retake Donbas (so named after the Croatian blitzkrieg of 1995 that retook the self-declared Republic of Serbian Krajina), Zelensky restricted and censored media, then banned political parties who defended the cultural rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speakers, and restricted the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, because of its canonical ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Fearing for their culture and their safety after the coup, by May 2014, the people of the Donbas rebelled against the coup government and set up a referendum on some form of autonomy. Putin asked the rebels to delay these referendums, to give the Ukrainian government time to reach a negotiated settlement with the rebels, but, when they went ahead on May 11 anyway, Moscow did not recognize the results but said that the will of the people should be respected.
In the May 2014 referendums, 89.7% of the Donbas voted for self rule, and 96.2% of Lugansk voted for independence. After the Russia invasion of Ukraine, 98% of Luhansk and 99% of Donetsk voted to join Russia. Though the accuracy and legitimacy of the referendums can be questioned, these results are not surprising, given both historical and contemporary attitudes in the region.
In 2014 and 2015, the Minsk agreements were brokered by France and Germany, agreed to by Ukraine and Russia, and accepted by the U.S. and the UN. They were designed to give Ukraine an opportunity to keep the Donbas in Ukraine, while giving them a modicum of local autonomy and local pluralism.
Putin’s partners in Minsk, however, subsequently admitted that the Minsk negotiations were a deliberate deception to lull Russia into a ceasefire and buy Ukraine time to build up an armed forces capable of achieving a military victory over the rebels.
Then German chancellor Angela Merkel has admitted that the goal of the negotiations was not a peaceful solution but the enabling of a military one: “[T]he 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time” and that they “used this time to get stronger, as you can see today.” Separately, France’s François Hollande agreed, saying, in a separate interview: “Yes, Angela Merkel is right on this point.” He added that “Ukraine has strengthened its military posture” and “It is the merit of the Minsk agreements to have given the Ukrainian army this opportunity.” Then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko confirms that in the Minsk negotiations, “We had achieved everything we wanted. Our goal was to, first, stop the threat, or at least to delay the war – to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.”
So, it is not at all surprising that, this time around, Russia is insisting on carefully negotiated terms, including settling the borders of Donbas and Crimea, as well as legally binding guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO, prior to any ceasefire.
It will not allow a ceasefire to become a cloaked opportunity for Ukraine to rearm, as happened with the Minsk Agreements, and it will not trust either Ukraine or the West with a ceasefire before the terms are firmly agreed upon. Russia has already been burned thrice by agreeing to a ceasefire: Minsk-1, Minsk-2, and the Istanbul Accords.
All parties seem to agree that negotiations must start from a recognition that Russia will not relinquish control over the Ukrainian territory it now controls. But, as Russia has said since 2014, its objective is not territory, but the threat to the rights of the population of Donbass (and Crimea), which have repeatedly expressed its desire for self determination through referenda and, ultimately, rebellion. These are the root causes that Ukraine and the West still need to address.
The Root Causes of the War in Ukraine, Or Why Russia Insists on the Donbas - Antiwar.com |
