Ancient, medieval and imperial Russian periods Steppe pastoralist ancestry in
Eurasia, The
Kurgan hypothesis places the
Pontic steppes of Ukraine and southern Russia as the
linguistic homeland of the
Proto-Indo-Europeans. The
Yamnaya culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans. The region has been inhabited for centuries by various nomadic tribes, such as
Scythians,
Alans,
Huns,
Bulgars,
Pechenegs,
Kipchaks,
Turco-Mongols,
Tatars and
Nogais. The region now known as the Donbas was largely unpopulated until the second half of the 17th century, when
Don Cossacks established the first permanent settlements in the region. The first town in the region was founded in 1676, called Solanoye (now
Soledar), which was built for the profitable business of exploiting newly discovered rock-salt reserves. Known for being a
Cossack land, the "
Wild Fields" (, ), the area that is now called the Donbas was largely under the control of the Ukrainian
Cossack Hetmanate and the Turkic
Crimean Khanate until the mid-late 18th century, when the
Russian Empire conquered the Hetmanate and annexed the Khanate. In the second half of the 17th century, settlers and fugitives from
Hetman's Ukraine and
Muscovy settled the lands north of the
Donets river. At the end of the 18th century, many
Russians,
Ukrainians,
Serbs and
Greeks migrated to lands along the southern course of the Donets river, into an area previously inhabited by nomadic
Nogais, who were nominally subject to the Crimean Khanate. Tsarist Russia named the conquered territories "
New Russia" (, ). As the
Industrial Revolution took hold across Europe, the vast
coal resources of the region, discovered in 1721, began to be exploited in the mid-late 19th century. in the 17th century It was at this point that the name
Donbas came into use, derived from the term "Donets Coal Basin" (; ), referring to the area along the
Donets river where most of the coal reserves were found. The rise of the coal industry led to a population boom in the region, largely driven by Russian settlers.
Donetsk, the most important city in the region today, was founded in 1869 by
Welsh businessman
John Hughes on the site of the old
Zaporozhian Cossack town of Oleksandrivka. Hughes built a steel mill and established several
collieries in the region. The city was named after him as Yuzivka () or Yuzovka (). With the development of Yuzovka and similar cities, large numbers of landless peasants from peripheral
governorates of the Russian Empire came looking for work. According to the
Russian Imperial Census of 1897, Ukrainians ("
Little Russians", in the official imperial language) accounted for 52.4% of the population of the region, whilst ethnic Russians constituted 28.7%. Ethnic Greeks,
Germans,
Jews and
Tatars also had a significant presence in the Donbas, particularly in the
district of
Mariupol, where they constituted 36.7% of the population. Despite this, Russians constituted the majority of the industrial workforce. Ukrainians dominated rural areas, but cities were often inhabited solely by Russians who had come seeking work in the region's heavy industries. Those Ukrainians who did move to the cities for work were quickly assimilated into the Russian-speaking worker class.
Russian Civil War and Soviet period (1918–1941) In April 1918 troops loyal to the
Ukrainian People's Republic took control of large parts of the region. For a while, its government bodies operated in the Donbas alongside their
Russian Provisional Government equivalents. During the 1917–22
Russian Civil War,
Nestor Makhno, who commanded the
Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, was the most popular leader in the Donbas. Ukrainians in the Donbas were greatly affected by the 1932–33
Holodomor famine and the
Russification policy of
Joseph Stalin. As most ethnic Ukrainians were rural peasant farmers, they bore the brunt of the famine.
Nazi occupation (1941–1943) The Donbas was greatly affected by the
Second World War. In the lead-up to the war, the region was racked by poverty and food shortages. War preparations resulted in an extension of the working day for factory labourers, whilst those who deviated from the heightened standards were arrested.
Nazi Germany's leader
Adolf Hitler viewed the resources of the Donbas as critical to
Operation Barbarossa. As such, the Donbas suffered under Nazi occupation during 1941 and 1942. Thousands of industrial labourers were deported to
Nazi Germany for use in factories. In what was then called Stalino
Oblast, now
Donetsk Oblast, 279,000 civilians were killed over the course of the occupation. In Voroshilovgrad Oblast, now
Luhansk Oblast, 45,649 were killed. In 1943 the
Operation Little Saturn and
Donbas strategic offensive by the
Red Army resulted in the return of Donbas to Soviet control. The war had taken its toll, leaving the region both destroyed and depopulated.
Soviet period (1943–1991) During the reconstruction of the Donbas after the end of the Second World War, large numbers of Russian workers arrived to repopulate the region, further altering the population balance. In 1926, 639,000 ethnic Russians resided in the Donbas, and Ukrainians made up 60% of the population. As a result of the
Russification policy, the Ukrainian population of the Donbass then declined drastically as ethnic Russians settled in the region in large numbers. By 1959, the ethnic Russian population was 2.55 million. Russification was further advanced by the 1958–59 Soviet educational reforms, which led to the near elimination of all Ukrainian-language schooling in the Donbas. By the time of the
Soviet Census of 1989, 45% of the population of the Donbas reported their ethnicity as Russian. In 1990, the
Interfront of the Donbass was founded as a movement against Ukrainian independence.
In independent Ukraine (from 1991) in
Luhansk. "To the sons of glory and freedom". In the
1991 referendum on Ukrainian independence, 83.9% of voters in Donetsk Oblast and 83.6% in Luhansk Oblast supported independence from the
Soviet Union. Turnout was 76.7% in Donetsk Oblast and 80.7% in Luhansk Oblast. In October 1991, a congress of South-Eastern deputies from all levels of government took place in Donetsk, where delegates demanded federalisation. These questions included whether Russian should be declared an official language of Ukraine, whether Russian should be the language of administration in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, whether Ukraine should federalise, and whether Ukraine should have closer ties with the
Commonwealth of Independent States. Close to 90% of voters voted in favour of these propositions. None of them were adopted since the vote was nationwide. Ukraine remained a
unitary state, Ukrainian was retained as the sole official language, and the Donbas gained no autonomy. A total of 3,576 delegates from 16
oblasts of Ukraine, the
Autonomous Republic of Crimea and
Sevastopol took part in the congress, claiming to represent over 35 million citizens. Moscow Mayor
Yurii Luzhkov and an advisor from the Russian Embassy were present in the presidium. There were calls for the appointment of Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine or
prime minister, for declaring of martial law in Ukraine, dissolution of the
Verkhovna Rada, creation of self-defence forces, and for the creation of a federative South-Eastern state with its capital in
Kharkiv. In other parts of Ukraine during the 2000s, the Donbas was often perceived as having a "thug culture", as being a "Soviet cesspool", and as "backward". Writing in the
Narodne slovo newspaper in 2005, commentator Viktor Tkachenko said that the Donbas was home to "
fifth columns", and that speaking Ukrainian in the region was "not safe for one's health and life". It was also portrayed as being home to pro-Russian separatism. The Donbas is home to a significantly higher number of cities and villages that were named after
Communist figures compared to the rest of Ukraine. Despite this portrayal, surveys taken across that decade and during the 1990s showed strong support for remaining within Ukraine and insignificant support for separatism.
Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–present) War in Donbas in 2015 until the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine From the beginning of March 2014, demonstrations by
pro-Russian and anti-government groups took place in the Donbas, as part of the aftermath of the
Revolution of Dignity and the
Euromaidan movement. These demonstrations, which followed the
annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, and which were part of a wider group of
concurrent pro-Russian protests across southern and eastern Ukraine, escalated in April 2014 into
a war between the Russian-backed
separatist forces of the self-declared
Donetsk and
Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR respectively), and the
Ukrainian government. Amid that conflict, the self-proclaimed republics held
referendums on the status of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts on 11 May 2014. In the referendums, viewed as illegal by Ukraine and undemocratic by the international community, about 90% voted for the independence of the DPR and LPR. The initial protests in the Donbas were largely native expressions of discontent with the new Ukrainian government. Russian involvement at this stage was limited to its voicing of support for the demonstrations. The emergence of the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk began as a small fringe group of the protesters, independent of Russian control. This unrest, however, only evolved into an armed conflict because of Russian military backing for what had been a marginal group as part of the
Russo-Ukrainian War. The conflict was thus, in the words of historian Hiroaki Kuromiya, "secretly engineered and cleverly camouflaged by outsiders". There was limited support for separatism in the Donbas before the outbreak of the war, and little evidence of support for an armed uprising. Russian claims that Russian speakers in the Donbas were being persecuted or even subjected to "
genocide" by the Ukrainian government, forcing its hand to intervene, were deemed false by
Voice of America. Fighting continued through the summer of 2014, and by August 2014, the Ukrainian "Anti-Terrorist Operation" was able to vastly shrink the territory under the control of the pro-Russian forces, and came close to regaining control of the Russo-Ukrainian border. In response to the deteriorating situation in the Donbas, Russia abandoned what has been called its "
hybrid war" approach, and began
a conventional invasion of the region. As a result of the Russian invasion, DPR and LPR insurgents regained much of the territory they had lost during the Ukrainian government's preceding military offensive. Only this Russian intervention prevented an immediate Ukrainian resolution to the conflict. This forced the Ukrainian side to seek the signing of a ceasefire agreement. Called the
Minsk Protocol, this was signed on 5 September 2014. As this failed to stop the fighting, another agreement, called
Minsk II was signed on 12 February 2015. This agreement called for the eventual reintegration of the Donbas republics into Ukraine, with a level of autonomy. The Minsk agreements were thus highly favourable to the Russian side, as their implementation would accomplish these goals. The conflict led to a vast exodus from the Donbas: half the region's population were forced to flee their homes. A
UN OHCHR report released on 3 March 2016 stated that, since the conflict broke out in 2014, the Ukrainian government registered 1.6 million internally displaced people who had fled the Donbas to other parts of Ukraine. Over 1 million were said to have fled elsewhere, mostly to Russia. At the time of the report, 2.7 million people were said to continue to live in areas under DPR and LPR control, Despite the Minsk agreements, low-intensity fighting along the line of contact between Ukrainian government and Russian-controlled areas continued until 2022. Since the start of the conflict there have been 29 ceasefires, each intended to remain in force indefinitely, but none of them stopped the violence. This led the war to be referred to as a "
frozen conflict". On 11 January 2017, the Ukrainian government approved a plan to reintegrate the occupied part of the Donbas and its population into Ukraine. The plan would give Russian-backed political entities partial control of the electorate and has been described by
Zerkalo Nedeli as "implanting a cancerous cell into Ukraine's body." This was never implemented, and was subject to public protest. A 2018 survey by
Sociological Group "Rating" of residents of the Ukrainian-controlled parts of the Donbas found that 82% of respondents believed there was no discrimination against Russian-speaking people in Ukraine. Only 11% saw some evidence of discrimination. whilst 34% supported a ceasefire and "freezing" the conflict, 23% supported military action to recover the occupied Donbas territories, and 6% supported separating these territories from Ukraine. effectively killing the
Minsk agreements. Russia subsequently launched a new,
full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, which Russian president
Vladimir Putin said was intended to "protect" the people of the Donbas from the "abuse" and "genocide" of the Ukrainian government. However, Putin's claims have been refuted. The DPR and LPR joined Russia's operation; the separatists stated that an operation to capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast had begun. On 18 April 2022, the
battle of Donbas began, a Russian offensive in mid-2022 within the larger
eastern Ukraine campaign. ==Demographics and politics==