Last month, Russia began to amass troops close to its border with Ukraine. Kremlin top brass’s media interventions seeking to explain the buildup of around one hundred thousand troops were ambiguous: from reassurances that these were simple military exercises to effective threats of a full-fledged war if Ukraine should join NATO. The demonstrative character of these actions was surprising, given that the Kremlin still does not recognize that Russia was involved in the Donbas war that broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Yet conflict was averted. On April 22, Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the exercise was over and the troops would move back to their home bases. This proved what many observers kept saying from the very beginning — that the buildup was a show of force more than anything else. The real aim of the maneuvers was not a new war but to mount pressure on Kyiv to make it yield in the Donbas conflict resolution process. However, even this scenario is prone to destabilize the situation in Ukraine.

More than seven years have passed since the signing of the Minsk agreements, which were supposed to reintegrate the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic (LDPR) into Ukraine. But this never happened. Donbas, a once-developed industrial region downgraded during the post-Soviet decades, has been further impoverished by the war, and is still divided by the front line.