In a televised speech lasting a full hour on February 21st, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, sought to justify his decision to recognise the separatist Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. After a winding historical detour Mr Putin alleged that Ukraine was committing “genocide” against Russian-speaking citizens of the Donbas and said Russia would send “peacekeeping” forces to the area. Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, has dismissed claims of genocide as “ridiculous”.
The arrival of Russian troops, either in peace or war, breaches the Minsk agreements. Signed in 2014 and 2015, these gave the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) authority to monitor the ceasefire between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas. Founded in 1975, the OSCE comprises 57 nations which deploy civilians in the field to monitor elections, improve policing and de-escalate military conflict. In Ukraine the OSCE employs 689 unarmed monitors from 43 countries; 24 of them are from Russia. This monitoring provides impartial information on what is happening on the ground.
The reports from the OSCE do not bode well for peace in the region. Even before Mr Putin’s announcement that he was recognising the breakaway regions as independent states, hostilities had escalated rapidly. Between February 18th and 20th the OSCE recorded an average of 1,600 ceasefire violations a day, compared with an average of 245 a day in the rest of 2022. These violations can be minor, such as the sound of gunfire, but in recent days explosions have accounted for 70% of violations, up from an average of 28% from January 1st to February 20th.
The OSCE’s data do not attribute the cause of violations to either side. Ukrainian troops or Russian-backed fighters may be responsible. But other data from the OSCE do suggest a distinct aggressor. Of the weapons in violation of the Minsk agreements during 2021, 85% were found in non-government controlled areas of the Donbas held by Russia’s proxies. And 91% of the illegal restrictions placed on OSCE monitors’ movements—who are frequently prevented from visiting or observing sensitive areas in the Donbas—were in places controlled by the Russian-backed troops.
An increase in hostilities will surely lead to more casualties. The head of the OSCE mission in Ukraine reports that deadly ceasefire violations have doubled since the start of the year when compared with the same period in 2021. Between 2016 and 2021, 1,539 civilians were injured or killed in the Donbas region; about one person for every 1,000 ceasefire violations.
Rather than a Ukrainian-backed genocide, all the evidence points to Russian-backed escalation of hostilities. The accusation of genocide is just part of Russia’s playbook to justify war. The other is to try to spark a retaliation from Ukraine’s military. On February 17th, a nursery school in a government-controlled area of Luhansk received a 1.5-metre-wide impact crater breaching its stone wall. The OSCE said that it was caused by an artillery round fired from the south-east (ie, from the separatists). Fortunately, no one was injured, but it is a portent of what may follow from Russia’s “peacekeeping” troops. ■
For a look behind the scenes of our data journalism, sign up to Off the Charts, our weekly newsletter. Our recent coverage of the Ukraine crisis can be found here.