War in Donbas
2014–2022 war between Ukraine and Russia in the Donbas region of Ukraine
The war in Donbas, also called the Donbas war, was a phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The war began in April 2014, when Russian-backed paramilitaries began an uprising against the Ukrainian government, seized territory and declared independent states. Ukraine's military launched an operation against them, but failed to fully retake the territory. Covertly, Russia's military were directly involved, and the separatists were largely under Russian control. This phase ended when the war was subsumed by the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In March 2014, following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied Crimea. Anti-revolution and pro-Russian protests began in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, collectively 'the Donbas'. On 12 April, a commando unit led by Russian citizen Igor 'Strelkov' Girkin crossed the border from Russia and seized Sloviansk and other settlements in the Donbas. Separatists declared the Donetsk and Luhansk republics (DPR and LPR) as independent states. Russia covertly supported them with soldiers and weaponry.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “War in Donbas” as 2014–2022 war between Ukraine and Russia in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as 2014–2022 war between Ukraine and Russia in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16335075. Authority coordinates are 48.000, 38.000. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2014 and 2022.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “War in Donbas”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow War in Donbas primary sources, War in Donbas archive and Donbas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “War in Donbas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.