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The 2022 evacuation of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic refers to mass evacuation of the residents of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) to the Russian Federation starting in February 2022. [1] [2]
On 18 February 2022, the leader of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, announced that DPR inhabitants were to evacuate to Russia due to the threat of attack from Ukraine.[ citation needed ] Later, Leonid Pasechnik, head of the LPR, did the same, and announced that the LPR civilian population was to be evacuated to Russia. [3] [ better source needed ] However, Ukraine denied the allegations of starting an offensive against the two republics. [4] The first train for the evacuation departed to Russia on 19 February. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Russia, 50,000 evacuees from the Donbas had arrived in Russia in the first two days since the announcement of the evacuation. [5]
Ukrainian authorities reported that most people in Donetsk and Luhansk did not leave their homes. Some citizens evacuated out of fear of the Russian authorities, rather than allegations of a Ukrainian offensive. [6] Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary to Russian president Vladimir Putin, said that he had no information of what was happening in the DPR. [7]
The Donetsk People's Republic is an internationally unrecognized republic of Russia, comprising the occupied parts of eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, with its capital in Donetsk. The DPR was created by Russian-backed paramilitaries in 2014, and it initially operated as a breakaway state until it was annexed by Russia in 2022.
The People's Militia of the Donetsk People's Republic and People's Militia of the Luhansk People's Republic are pro-Russian paramilitaries in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, under the overall control of the Russian Federation. They are also referred to as Russian separatist forces or Russian proxy forces. They were affiliated with the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) during the war in Donbas (2014–2022), the first stage of the Russo-Ukrainian War. They then supported the Russian Armed Forces against the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the 2022 Russian invasion. In September 2022, Russia annexed the DPR and LPR, and began integrating the paramilitaries into its armed forces. They are designated as terrorist groups by the government of Ukraine.
The Luhansk People's Republic or Lugansk People's Republic is an internationally unrecognised republic of Russia in the occupied parts of eastern Ukraine's Luhansk Oblast, with its capital in Luhansk. The LPR was proclaimed by Russian-backed paramilitaries in 2014, and it initially operated as a breakaway state until it was annexed by Russia in 2022.
Novorossiya or New Russia, also referred to as the Union of People's Republics, was a project for a confederation between the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) in Eastern Ukraine, both of which were under the control of pro-Russian separatists.
The Minsk agreements were a series of international agreements which sought to end the Donbas war fought between armed Russian separatist groups and Armed Forces of Ukraine, with Russian regular forces playing a central part. The first, known as the Minsk Protocol, was drafted in 2014 by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format. After extensive talks in Minsk, Belarus, the agreement was signed on 5 September 2014 by representatives of the Trilateral Contact Group and, without recognition of their status, by the then-leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). This agreement followed multiple previous attempts to stop the fighting in the region and aimed to implement an immediate ceasefire.
The 2014 Donbas general elections were held on 2 November 2014 by the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, which were at that time both members of the now defunct Novorossiya confederation.
Donbas Post is an enterprise that operates the postal system of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, the non-recognized entities created by Russia-backed separatists on the illegally annexed Ukrainian territories. It has been difficult for its operation due to the Russian aggression in Ukraine being upscaled to a full scale invasion of Russia and the Donbass region being a key region of the fighting.
Leonid Ivanovich Pasechnik is a Ukrainian-born politician who has served as Head of the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) since 2017. He holds the position in acting capacity ever since the illegal and unrecognized Russian annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts in 2022. Pasechnik had previously held office as the LPR's Minister of State Security from 2014 to 2018.
Natalia Yurievna Nikonorova is a Ukrainian-Russian politician, who serves as the Russian Federation Senator from the Donetsk People's Republic since 2022. She previously served as the republic's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 until its widely internationally unrecognised annexation by Russia in 2022.
From April 2014 until September 2022, the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) claimed to be independent states. Their sovereignty was recognised by South Ossetian authorities in 2014, Russia and Abkhazian authorities in February 2022, Syria in June 2022 and North Korea in July 2022.
The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), a disputed Russian republic in eastern Ukraine, in March 2020.
2022 in Russia is the 31st year of the Russian Federation.
Luhansk People's Republic–Russia relations were bilateral relations between Russia and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). The LPR is widely internationally unrecognized, with most of the international community regarding the LPR as a Russian military occupation of a portion of Ukraine's Luhansk Oblast. The LPR was annexed by Russia on 30 September 2022; the LPR authorities willingly acceded to Russia, and the annexation is widely internationally unrecognized. From April 2014 to September 2022, the LPR portrayed itself as an independent state, and it was widely regarded as a puppet state of Russia by the international community.
The battle of Volnovakha was a military engagement which lasted from 25 February 2022 until 12 March 2022, as part of the Eastern Ukraine offensive during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian and DPR forces engaged Ukrainian forces at the small city of Volnovakha in Donetsk Oblast, which is located close to the Ukrainian-DPR border.
In late September 2022, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian-installed officials in Ukraine staged so-called referendums on the annexation of occupied territories of Ukraine by Russia. They were widely described as sham referendums by commentators and denounced by various countries. The validity of the results of the referendums has been accepted by North Korea, and no other sovereign state.
The general mobilization in the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic began on 19 February 2022, 5 days before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Tens of thousands of local residents were forcibly mobilized for the war.
The political crisis in the Lugansk People's Republic (2017) was a political crisis in a breakaway Pro-Russian separatist unrecognized republic characterized by a confrontation between the Head of the Luhansk People's Republic, Igor Plotnitsky, and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Igor Kornet, which ended with the resignation of Plotnitsky.
This is a list article about flags that have been used by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine and in areas occupied by Russia and Russian-controlled forces during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
