February 2015: Russia-backed separatists ride into Debaltseve, Ukraine. (c) Vadim Ghirda AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Over the past few weeks, Russia-watchers have been intrigued by a leak of emails sent and received by the office of Vladislav Surkov, an official adviser to president Putin.
The Surkov Leaks, which have renewed discussion around Moscow’s involvement in the pseudo-civil war and emergence of “people’s republics” in eastern Ukraine, confirm once more that the armed conflict in the Donbas is, to large extent, a Kremlin project. The conflict is merely one part of Moscow’s broader policy of undermining the Ukrainian state after the victory of the Euromaidan revolution in February 2014.
Yet while the Surkov Leaks provide important additional documentation, they do not alter, in principle, our understanding of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The leaks confirm and support earlier mainstream interpretations of the armed conflict in the Donbas as a covert Russian invasion of Ukraine. Two months earlier, another leak did, however, provide evidence that has (or should have) questioned earlier interpretations of the genesis of the tensions in eastern and southern Ukraine. These leaks deal with the prehistory of the events that eventually led to the start of the still ongoing low-intensity war in the Donets Basin, in April 2014.
