Russian lawmakers have passed a direct appeal to Vladimir Putin to recognise the Russian-controlled separatist states of Donetsk and Luhansk, providing a way to up the ante in the regional crisis without launching an attack on Ukraine.
Putin has said he will not immediately recognise the so-called republics but he is likely to wield that option as a bargaining chip as he continues to demand security guarantees from the west.
The stage-managed manoeuvre unfolded on Tuesday as Putin also confirmed a “partial” withdrawal of Russian forces from the Ukrainian border, a decision that would reduce the potential for a war if it involves a large number of troops. It is not yet clear that it will.
Since 2014, Russia has used the deadly Donbas conflict to divert attention from its annexation of Crimea and as part of its strategy to maintain control over Ukraine’s geopolitical future.
The Minsk ceasefire deal signed in 2015 formalised a plan to reinsert the Donbas territories into Ukraine but give them a veto over Kyiv’s foreign policy choices, including potential accession to Nato.
But the deal has stalled over ceasefire violations, disagreements about what steps to take first, and a growing belief in Ukraine that the deal was signed at gunpoint and is no longer politically viable.
Hawkish officials and prominent figures in Russia such as the head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, have called for recognition of the regions’ independence. But that is far from a popular sentiment and would remove a key element of the Kremlin’s leverage over Ukraine by killing the Minsk deal.
“The recognition of the LPR and DPR [Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics] by Russia would signify its intentional withdrawal from the Minsk agreements,” a Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Moscow has already made it difficult to reintegrate the territories by issuing hundreds of thousands of Russian passports there and arming and backing their governments since 2014.
Still, a formal recognition of independence would be seen as a considerable escalation. The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said recognition would be a “blatant violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty”. And some European officials have said it would trigger sanctions packages put together to deter a Russian invasion.
“The call of Russia’s State Duma to recognise the occupied territories of Ukraine is an open escalation,” said Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister. “Approval by Kremlin should be met with swift and decisive sanctions.”
The decision may give Putin a way to save face from the crisis, after trying and so far failing to achieve guarantees that Nato will not admit Ukraine and will remove its infrastructure from countries that joined after 1997.
Rather than starting a war, he could kick out the legs from under the ceasefire settlement and move troops into Donbas or even provoke a Ukrainian attack, giving Russia a casus belli.
While Putin argued in his remarks that his deputies were “following public opinion”, it is clear that the Duma vote on Tuesday was largely managed by the Kremlin. As Putin noted, the decision for a partial withdrawal from the borders was directly tied to the vote on recognising the republics. One form of pressure on Ukraine was being swapped for another.
At an impasse in negotiations with the west, Putin is threatening to demolish the status quo. It may mean Russia is considering other options besides war to achieve its goals, but it also signals the Kremlin is growing impatient.
“Russia hears that Ukraine is not prepared to join Nato today, and we know this premise,” Putin said after talks with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz. “And they say right away that it won’t be admitted tomorrow, but will be admitted when they prepare it for this. But this might be too late for us. Therefore, we want this issue to be settled now, right now, in the near future, through a negotiating process, by peaceful means.”