Discussion
The Donbas has been the crux of the Russo-Ukrainian war, with its significance evident when Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly demanded full control over the region during the peace talks in August 2025. Despite its strategic value, Ukraine's policies towards the region varied between isolation and reintegration. When insurgencies broke out in 2014, Kyiv initially adopted an anti-terrorist operation and a series of hardline measures to isolate the occupied territories, such as restrictions on movement and suspension of public services. Existing literature explained isolation due to Ukraine's limited means and the lack of will to regain the occupied territories. These explanations, however, could not account for Kyiv's parallel efforts to reintegrate these territories, including the establishment of a dedicated ministry and the adoption of a state action plan. This suggested that Kyiv was neither utterly devoid of the means nor the will to regain some control over these territories.
The question remains as to why Ukraine's policies towards the Donbas shifted between isolation and reintegration, which were notable during Petro Poroshenko's presidency. Using the two-level game approach, this paper explains the variations as a result of the lack of alignment between the domestic and international levels. While Russia's threats at the international level had significant impacts on the initial isolation policy as Kyiv tried to contain the separatists, Poroshenko, in view of the destabilising effects of prolonged isolation, promoted reintegration to mitigate the negative impacts. These reintegration attempts, however, were constrained by domestic factors such as institutional gridlock, hawkish opposition, and public opinion, which was neither strictly supportive of nor against reintegration but displayed an inclination towards the defence of sovereignty. This led to the government's contrasting stances, such as those in the 2017 Donbas blockade and the 2018 Reintegration Law.
This paper uses the two-level game approach to illustrate the intricate balancing dynamics in Ukraine's Donbas policy, thereby promoting understanding of the domestic-external interactions in the policy process. It provides empirical evidence regarding the domestic influences on Ukraine's Donbas policy and shows the agency of Ukrainian leaders in the decision-making process, as they played an active broker role between the international and domestic levels. This analysis offers an alternative perspective to the common perception that Ukraine's Donbas policy was mainly shaped by external factors, thus contributing to the decolonisation of Ukrainian studies.
