{"id":1111,"date":"2018-11-09T15:21:03","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T14:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/?p=1111"},"modified":"2019-01-20T17:58:16","modified_gmt":"2019-01-20T16:58:16","slug":"current-events-in-the-peoples-republics-of-eastern-ukraine-interim-report-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/current-events-in-the-peoples-republics-of-eastern-ukraine-interim-report-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Current events in the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d of eastern Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nikolaus von Twickel: <\/strong>Current events in the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d of eastern Ukraine. Interim Report 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Download<\/a><\/p>\n

Summary <\/strong><\/p>\n

2018 saw major political tensions in separatist-controlled Donetsk, culminating in the assassination of local leader Alexander Zakharchenko on August 31. Power in the Donetsk \u201cPeople\u2019s Republic\u201d (\u201cDNR\u201d) subsequently shifted to Denis Pushilin, the longtime Minsk negotiator, who has a reputation of being highly manageable and of having the Kremlin\u2019s trust.<\/p>\n

The political strife before Zakharchenko\u2019s assassination, the purge of his allies afterwards and the lack of public debate about who is guilty strongly suggest that the longtime separatist leader\u2019s killing was either ordered or tolerated by Moscow. Under Pushilin, Russia undoubtedly increased its political, military and economic control over the \u201cDNR\u201d, bringing it to levels seen in the neighbouring Luhansk \u201cPeople\u2019s Republic\u201d (\u201cLNR\u201d).<\/p>\n

The fact that Pushilin is a more flexible and civilian personality than the warlord-like Zakharchenko does not make a solution easier. The same can be said about the Luhansk \u201cPeople\u2019s Republic\u201d (\u201cLNR\u201d) under the leadership of the intelligence officer Leonid Pasechnik.<\/p>\n

However, questions abound about both \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u2019\u201d internal stability. The fact that its leaders both consolidated power only after purging their predecessors\u2019 supporters and that no credible competitors are expected to challenge them in the November 11 \u201celections\u201d does not speak of high internal consolidation.<\/p>\n

Overall, the fundamentals governing the conflict remain unchanged. There are strong indications that Moscow\u2019s goal is to maintain hotbeds of instability and deeply anti-western Trojan Horses in Ukraine\u2019s flank. Under these circumstances, the best Ukraine can do is project good governance and prosperity into the areas it does not control and hope that the growing economic burden and\/or ungovernability will make Russia rethink its support for the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d.<\/p>\n

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The report covers events in the Donetsk and Luhansk \u201cpeople\u2019s republics\u201d over the period from January until October 2018. It is part of the project \u201eHuman Rights Monitoring in Eastern Ukraine\u201c of DRA e.V. Berlin and it is based on background interviews and the analysis of open internet sources.<\/p>\n

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Photo credits: \u201cIndustrial city Donetsk\u201d (2013) by Vladimir Yaitskiy, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence, desaturated from original.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nikolaus von Twickel: Current events in the \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d of eastern Ukraine. Interim Report 2018 Download Summary 2018 saw major political tensions in separatist-controlled Donetsk, culminating in the assassination of local leader Alexander Zakharchenko on August 31. Power in the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1111"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicmonitoring.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}