Developing an online media presence is of particular importance during a military conflict. Two motivations inform the need for doing so: legitimising the grievances underlying one’s participation in the conflict and delegitimising the opponent by demoralising it or by demonising it in the eyes of third-party observers. Between 2014 and 2018, around forty news sites were set up by the authorities of the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics’. This chapter examines the content produced by four of these news sites. Three main narratives are identified: ‘business as usual’, ‘the cost of the war’, and ‘shaming the enemy’. News sites weaponised emotional discourse, with a focus on evoking fear and anger among their readers. A great deal of attention was paid to portraying Ukraine as a failed state, guilty of war crimes, which has no business continuing the war and which deliberately stymies all attempts at resolving the conflict peacefully. Conversely, ingroup identity was implicitly assumed rather than explored in detail; articles that evoked patriotism or addressed cultural events or local politics rarely explored why readers should identify with the Donbas ‘Republics’.

This chapter traces the development of the Donbas media landscape after the emergence of the ‘People’s Republics’ of Donetsk and Luhansk (DNR and LNR) in 2014. It focuses on the DNR/LNR authorities’ efforts to first break down and then rebuild local media. These efforts consisted of two phases: one of destruction and one of reconstruction. The destruction phase involved tearing down the existing media structure and pressuring journalists into either leaving Donbas or cooperating with the new authorities. The reconstruction phase involved setting up new media channels or repurposing existing ones, as well as implementing new legislation to impose censorship and promote certain desired narratives. The ministries of information of the two ‘Republics’ promoted local media production and set limits to what was allowed to be published by implementing accreditation procedures and keeping track of journalists working in the region. This formalisation occurred through a system of laws, decrees, edicts, and other regulations.

This chapter examines newspaper discourse in the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics’, analysing the content of twenty-six local newspapers between the start of the Euromaidan demonstrations in late 2013 and the end of 2017. The goal of this chapter is to uncover the themes and narratives in DNR and LNR print media, and examine how these narratives relate back to ideology and identity building. Three main narratives are identified: ‘business as usual’, ‘war and memory’, and ‘loss and guilt’. Newspapers in the Donbas ‘Republics’ continued to perform ‘typical’ activities as a source of information for local communities. However, a significant part of their content did address the development of collective identity, for example, through references to newly instated public holidays and a kinship with Russia and the Russian language. However, this ‘ingroup’ identity remained impoverished, projecting an identity discourse without a sui generis, unifying coherence. Instead, negative descriptions of the ‘outgroup’ (i.e., Ukraine/the ‘Kyiv regime’) received much more attention, with a view to demonising Ukraine and Ukrainians in the eyes of the local population.

This chapter examines political and ideological projects in the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics’ (DNR and LNR), from the outbreak of the Russian–Ukrainian War in early 2014 until after the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. It focuses on the ‘Republics’’ leadership’s search for historical, ideological, and identity-based justifications for their declarations of ‘independence’ from Ukraine in 2014. After an initial phase of power centralisation, both ‘Republics’ settled into a comfortable non-ideological status, strongly tied to but never united with Russia, with neither their past nor future clearly vocalised. Neither of the two ‘Republics’ should therefore be considered projects that are ideological in nature. Instead, the ideological underpinnings of both statelets have always been fractured, erratic, and ad hoc.

The Russian–Ukrainian War is one of the most important conflicts of the twenty-first century. Russia’s 2022 invasion was a failure in the military sense, but also in terms of propaganda. Despite a vast reservoir of ideological and historical referents to draw from, neither Russia nor the leadership of the Donbas ‘People’s Republics’ cared much for ideology. All attempts to build a collective identity (an ‘ingroup’) were short-lived, vocalised rarely and inconsistently on the pages of local newspapers and websites. Meanwhile, the outgroup, or the ‘they’ that opposes the ‘we’, was subject to a highly detailed and rich discursive construction. Internally (addressing the local population), this outgroup-focused discourse hearkened back to past conflicts, primarily World War II, and projected a sense of guilt on the part of Ukraine towards Donbas. Externally (addressing audiences outside the DNR and LNR, primarily Russian-speaking Ukrainians), this discourse ignored history altogether, and instead projected a sense of shame rather than guilt, seeking to discredit the Ukrainian government without reference to a shared connection that was lost.

This chapter explores the consequences of the extensive influence campaign mounted by Russia and its proxies during the Russian–Ukrainian war. It focuses on the extent to which the media discourse that emanated from the Donbas ‘Republics’ and Russia about the Euromaidan revolution, the Donbas War, the ‘Kyiv regime’, and the 2022 invasion resulted in shifts in terms of how people in Donbas and Ukraine felt about themselves. Years of sustained effort to portray Ukraine as a pro-fascist country with a US-installed puppet government were at least somewhat successful at fostering stronger anti-Ukrainian sentiments within Russia, and to an extent among Ukrainians in the Donbas ‘Republics’. This success has expressed itself as continued and sustained support among Russians for the invasion of Ukraine. However, in Ukraine itself (and especially among Russian-speaking Ukrainians), this propaganda campaign backfired, and instead contributed to a consolidation of Ukrainian identity, which became stronger than ever before.

Political technology works. It can create total systems of control. It can give malign actors the edge in political competition. It can create fake political subjects and entire virtual political geometries. It can grow support for fringe and minority politics. And it can be used to reverse lever outsider political takeovers by creating artificial rivals to traditional political structures and then drive them mainstream.

As the conflict in Donbas stabilized, Ukraine and Russia reached an impasse over how the Minsk agreements should be implemented. Ukraine gradually strengthened its ties with Europe, and secured the separation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Moscow’s control. The election of Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 led to hopes for a breakthrough in negotiations, but little progress was made. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin enacted constitutional changes that would potentially keep him in power until 2036. While not quite frozen, the conflict appeared likely to endure at a manageable level of violence, potentially for many years.

The delay of the Association Agreement spurred protests, and violent repression caused them to grow. Yanukovych’s ouster outraged Putin, who again saw a revolution thwart Russia’s position in Ukraine. He saw an irresistible opportunity to respond. Seizing Crimea regained a territory Russia had always wanted; it showed that Russia could defy the West; it boosted Putin’s domestic popularity; and it hamstrung Ukraine’s new government. The conflict then spread to eastern Ukraine, where the shooting down of a passenger aircraft dramatically increased international outrage at Russia’s actions. The West enacted sanctions, while the conflict itself stabilized territorially in the February 2015 Minsk-2 agreement.

The delay of the Association Agreement spurred protests, and violent repression caused them to grow. Yanukovych’s ouster outraged Putin, who again saw a revolution thwart Russia’s position in Ukraine. He saw an irresistible opportunity to respond. Seizing Crimea regained a territory Russia had always wanted; it showed that Russia could defy the West; it boosted Putin’s domestic popularity; and it hamstrung Ukraine’s new government. The conflict then spread to eastern Ukraine, where the shooting down of a passenger aircraft dramatically increased international outrage at Russia’s actions. The West enacted sanctions, while the conflict itself stabilized territorially in the February 2015 Minsk-2 agreement.