Novorossiya (confederation)

Novorossiya or New Russia (russian: Новороссия, ; uk, Новоросія, Novorosiia, ovoroˈsijɐ, also referred to as the Union of People's Republics ( rus, Союз народных республик, Soyuz narodnykh respublik, sɐˈjuz nɐˈroːdnɨx rʲɪˈspublʲɪk; uk, Союз народних республік, translit=Soiuz narodnykh respublik, oˈjuz nɐˈrodnɪx resˈpublik was a confederation of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) in Eastern Ukraine, both of which are under the control of pro-Russian separatists.

The concept of "Novorossiya" emerged in public discourse along with the beginning of conflict in east Ukraine. Referring to the historic Novorossiya, a former imperial Russian territory conquered from the Cossacks and the Ottomans in which Russian settlers were encouraged to settle, Russia promoted this new Russia concept as a new identity for the Ukrainian breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The two constituent republics of the proposed confederation have limited diplomatic recognition, while the Ukrainian government classified them as terrorist groups and initially referred to their territory as the Anti-terrorist Operation Zone. The creation of Novorossiya was declared on 22 May 2014, and one month later spokesmen of both republics declared their merger into a confederal "Union of People's Republics". Within a year, the project was suspended: on 1 January 2015, founding leadership announced the project has been put on hold, and on 20 May the constituent members announced the freezing of the political project.

Background

The historical ''Novorossiya'' was a territory of the Russian Empire formed from the Crimean Khanate and the Zaporozhian Sich, which was under a mutual condominium of the Russian Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The territory had been annexed several years after the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca concluded the Russo-Turkish War in 1774. Novorossiya initially included today's Southern Ukraine as well as some parts of today's Russia such as Kuban. The modern Russian Black Sea coast that was occupied by the Russian Tsardom from native Circassians under the military protection of the Ottoman Empire was not conquered until 1829 and was ceded to Russia in the 1829 Treaty of Adrianople.

The Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic was invoked during the war in Donbas (started 2014), when the legislature of the unrecognized separatist Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) adopted a memorandum on 5 February 2015 declaring itself the successor to the Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, and Artyom as a founding father.

The region was soon colonized by Ukrainian, Romanian, Russian, German, Greek, Bulgarian, Jewish, and other settlers. The major cities were Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Novorossiisk (now called Dnipro). In 1802, the governorate of Novorossiya was split into three governorates.

Most of the 18th century Novorossiya was incorporated in 1917 into the newly proclaimed Ukrainian People's Republic. After the defeat of pro-independence Ukrainians in the Ukrainian–Soviet War, the Soviet government confirmed that Southern Ukraine was part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The Novorossiya movement made its appearance in Odesa in August 1990. The movement, known as the Democratic Union of Novorossiya, argued that given the separate ethnos of the region it should have an autonomous status within a federated Ukrainian state. It campaigned for "special state status" within "the historical boundaries of Novorossiya" (at the time Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, and Crimean Oblasts, and also part of the Dniester region of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic). It failed, however, to gain popular support.

In September 1990, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn published an article in opposition to the cultural partition of Ukraine and Russia in which he references "Novorossiya", i.e., "including those regions which have never been part of the traditional Ukraine: the ' wild steppe' of the nomads the later 'New Russia' as well as the Crimea, the Donbass area, and the lands stretching east almost to the Caspian Sea". He argues that "self-determination of peoples" requires that a nation must resolve issues of identity ''for itself''.

By November 1991, representatives from the Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Crimean Oblasts had met in Odesa to discuss the question of forming a new state, "Novorossiya". This was necessitated, they explained, by the growth of "nationalist tendencies" in Ukraine, its increasing isolationism, and diminishing ties with Russia.Three days after the 1 December 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum, the mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, argued that Russia had handed over to Ukraine "a whole series of Russian provinces, the so-called Novorossiya, whose population is for the most part Russian" and that the Russian minority in Ukraine was threatened with forcible "Ukrainianisation". Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the term "Novorossiya" began to be used again in calls for the independence or secession of regions of Ukraine corresponding to different areas.

As late as September 1992, in Odesa, several organizations such as the Civic Movement of Odesa, Rus', the Socialist Party, and Novorossiya were campaigning for the establishment of a separate Novorossiyan region, the exact borders of which were still being debated.

In June 1994, the chairman of Transnistria's Supreme Council made a reference to Crimea, Odesa and other oblasts as "Novorossiya".

After the Orange Revolution, Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center wrote that in 2005 and again in 2008 some quarters in Moscow, that were not entirely academic, discussed the idea of a Russia-friendly buffer state, "Novorossiya", being formed out of Southern Ukraine from the Crimea to Odesa in response to perceived Western penetration into the former Soviet Union. However, the schema was not encouraged due to perceived waning of the Orange movement.

The idea persisted on the political margins within Ukraine and Russia until resurfaced in spring 2014. As part of Ukrainian-Russian conflict, after successful annexation of Crimea Russia subsequently intervened in eastern Ukraine, exploiting unrest therein agitating and lending support for separatism. In April, after Russian backed separatists seized administration buildings in Donbas the term "Novorossiya" has been brought up often. On 17 April, during talks in Geneva on resolving the crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at a question and answer session that even "in the tsarist days Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Nikolayev and Odessa were not part of Ukraine" but part of Novorossiya, and that they had been irresponsibly ceded to Ukraine (in fact, the city of Kharkiv).

On 29 August 2014, President Putin issued a statement addressed to the "Militia of Novorossiya" calling upon it to show humanitarian compassion and allow surrounded Ukrainian soldiers to withdraw and reunite with their families. This was the last official statement by Putin addressing "Novorossiya".

History

As part of Russia hybrid warfare in Ukraine on 17 April 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his concept of the historic Novorossiya, giving legitimacy to the nascent separatist movement when he described the Donbas as part of the historic "New Russia" (''Novorossiya'') region, and issued a statement of bewilderment as how the region had ever become part of Ukraine in 1922 with the foundation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Few weeks earlier, Putin used similar language when referring to Crimea, which ended with its annexation.

Formation

The New Russia Party, founded on 13 May 2014 in Donetsk, Ukraine, declared on its first congress of 22 May 2014 the formation of a new self-declared state named "Novorossiya", inspired by the historical region of the Russian Empire that carried that name. The congress was attended by separatist officials of the Donetsk People's Republic, the Donbas People's Militia as well as by the Donetsk Republic leader Pavel Gubarev, ultranationalist/Stalinist writer Alexander Prokhanov, Eurasianist political scientist and Eurasia Party leader Aleksandr Dugin, and . According to Gubarev the state would include Kharkiv