title: COVID-19 lockdown in India

text: Based on estimation models from various independent sources and MoSPI it was predicted that lockdown (1.0 + 2.0) helped avert 14-29lakh cases and 37,000-78,000 deaths until 15 May.


title: COVID-19 lockdown in India

text: Among various estimation models presented at the briefing the one by Boston Consulting Group showed that 1.2M-210,000 lives were saved and 36-70lakh cases were averted due to the lockdown until 15 May. Another model by Public Health Foundation of India predicted that 78,000 deaths were averted during the period.


title: COVID-19 lockdown in India

text: Henk Bekedam, WHO Representative to India, praised the response describing it as "timely, comprehensive and robust". WHO executive director, Mike Ryan said that lockdowns alone will not eliminate coronavirus. He said that India must take necessary measures to prevent a second and third wave of infections. On 3 April 2020, Dr David Nabarro, WHO's special envoy on the disease, said that the "Lockdown in India was early, far-sighted and courageous" and was better than waiting for another 3 or 4 weeks.


title: COVID-19 lockdown in India

text: In late March, two researchers from the University of Cambridge came up with a new mathematical model that predicts a flat 49-day countrywide lockdown or sustained lockdown with periodic relaxation extending over two months may be necessary to prevent COVID-19 resurgence in India.


title: COVID-19 lockdown in India

text: According to "The Economist", the lockdown was "all but certain to have exacerbated" the devastation of the pandemic.


title: COVID-19 lockdown in India

text: The Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP) issued a report in late March, in collaboration with researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University, where it said that a national lockdown is not "productive" and could cause "serious economic damage". It advocated state-level lockdowns in the most affected states. Its models predicted that in the best-case scenario, a peak of one million hospitalisations would be encountered in early June. In an op-ed in "The New York Times", the CDDEP director Laxminarayan explained that if the national lockdown finds good compliance, it would reduce the peak infections in early May by 70 to 80 percent, but still 1 million would require hospitalisation and critical care. He further hypothesised If the lockdown was not imposed the number of critical patients would have reached 5-6million.


title: COVID-19 lockdown in India

text: The CDDEP released another report on 20 April, again in collaboration with researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University. This report discussed the "potential impact of the lockdown". The study concluded that the lockdown would help in significantly slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the country. It said that the lockdown would buy the government critical precursory time to expand COVID-19 healthcare infrastructure, by keeping the hospitalisation rates in check and preventing the overwhelming of existing healthcare facilities. The study also said that the lockdown measures like physical distancing, ban on social gatherings, and movement restrictions would further delay and reduce the peak of infections and hospitalisation.


title: COVID-19 lockdown in India

text: Economist Jean Drèze stated that the lockdown had been "almost a death sentence" for the underprivileged of the country, in an interview with "News18". He went on to say, "The policies are made or influenced by a class of people who pay little attention to the consequences for the underprivileged".


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The Battle of Donbas is an ongoing military offensive that is part of the wider eastern Ukraine offensive of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The battle began on 18 April 2022 between the armed forces of Russia and Ukraine for control of the provinces (oblasts) of Donetsk and Luhansk. Military analysts consider the battle to be part of the second strategic phase of the invasion.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The aim of the battle is to encircle Ukrainian troops in the Donbas and to annex the entire Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts to the Russian-backed separatist states of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). The initial development and strategic importance of the battle of the Donbas has been compared to the Battle of Kursk (1943).


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: By 23 June, Russian officials claimed to control 55% of the Donetsk region. By 3 July, Russia claimed to control all of the Luhansk region, with Russian and separatist forces controlling the cities of Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, Rubizhne, and many more. However, on 19 September, Ukraine recaptured Bilohorivka, a village close to Lysychansk in the Luhansk Oblast.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 25 March 2022, Russian officials declared that the first phase of the "special military operation" in Ukraine was complete. On 29 March 2022, they declared that they intended to scale back their military operations in the region around the capital city of Kyiv. This effectively ended Russian operations in northern Ukraine and in Northeastern Ukraine. Russian military officials declared that the Ukrainian Navy and Air Force had been neutralized. They also stated that the DPR and LPR controlled 54% and 93% of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, respectively. The tactical withdrawal of Russian Armed Forces from the north was completed by 6 April 2022. As the Ukrainian forces regained previously occupied territory, Russian war crimes — including the Bucha massacre — were discovered.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The Donbas region had been the site of protracted fighting between Russia-backed separatists from the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics and the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Between 2014 and late 2021, the war in Donbas had taken the lives of more than 10,000 separatist, Russian, and Ukrainian combatants, as well as 3,095 civilians.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 24 February 2022, Russia, along with the quasi-states DPR and LPR launched an invasion across numerous fronts, including in the Donbas. On the same date, Russian and allied forces began fighting the battle of Kharkiv, as well as numerous other small clashes aimed at capturing key Ukrainian cities. The Siege of Mariupol also began on 24 February, destroying 95% of the city and potentially killing over 22,000 civilians. Between 24 February and 18 April, Russian forces did not conduct much activity along the "Line of Contact," the front line which had more or less remained static since 2014, only launching small-scale reconnaissance efforts as well as small-scale artillery campaigns against Ukrainian military installations.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 11 March 2022, Russian tanks allegedly shelled a care home for the elderly in Kreminna, killing 56 civilians and wounding an unknown number of residents. According to Ukrainian authorities, an additional 15 civilians were abducted by Russian soldiers and taken to separatist-occupied territory in Luhansk Oblast.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 8 April 2022, Russian forces allegedly launched an attack on the Kramatorsk railway station. The attack killed 59 civilians, including seven children, and wounded 114 more. Ukrainian and Western officials decried the attack as "purposeful," a "monstrous war crime," and a "deliberate slaughter," while the Russian Defense Ministry denied the accusations and instead claimed the attack to be a false-flag operation by Ukrainian forces, arguing that the Tochka-U missile used was not a part of the Russian arsenal but rather the Ukrainian one.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: For the battle, the Russians used three armies along with a tank division and a rocket artillery brigade. By mid-April, Russia had concentrated upwards of 65 battalion tactical groups (BTGs) on the line of contact. Over the course of several days before 18 April, 11 BTGs were added to the existing Russian strength in the Donbas, bringing the total number of BTGs in the Donbas to 76, amounting to a total of about 60,000 troops.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The Union of Donbas Volunteers, a pro-Russian group of volunteers formed in 2014, was said to have an active strength of about 14,500 fighters.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Western media citing officials of the European Union have reported that 10,000–20,000 Libyan, Syrian, Ethiopian, and Wagner Group mercenaries were mobilized by Russian forces in the Donbas.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: For the battle, the Ukrainians had concentrated six regular brigades and the Georgian Legion. According to Forbes on 1 February, Ukraine's army consisted of 20 active brigades, meaning that 30% of the Ukrainian active forces, or around 51,000 soldiers, were organized in the Donbas. Additionally, units of the Territorial Defense force were active in the Donbas, along with an unknown number of civilian reserves, foreign volunteers, and partisans.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: President Zelenskyy said on April 15 that Ukrainian forces numbered 44,000 in the Donbas region. On 19 April, the BBC reported that Ukrainian troops in the Donbas numbered 40,000–50,000 men.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: In mid-April 2022, U.S. intelligence reported that Russia was "repositioning" its military units to the Donbas. Russian units from Northern Ukraine battlefronts in Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, and elsewhere were noted by Maxar satellite imagery to be relocating to the Donbas region, while reinforcements from regions in Belarus and Russia supplemented these units.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov acknowledged the beginning of a new offensive in Donbas, claiming it to be a "very important moment in this entire special operation." To address the new stage of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron and US president Joe Biden held a meeting with representatives from France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Romania. They were joined by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 22 April the commander of Russia's Central Military District, Rustam Minnekayev, declared that the aim of the "second phase" of the country's invasion of Ukraine was to fully seize Donbas and Southern Ukraine and to establish a land corridor with Transnistria, a Russian-occupied, internationally unrecognized breakaway republic that is instead internationally recognized as part of Moldova. He alleged that there was "evidence that the Russian-speaking population is being oppressed" in Transnistria. The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine replied to this announcement by describing Russia's intentions as imperialism, saying that it contradicted previous Russian claims that assured that Russia did not have territorial ambitions over Ukraine and that Russia had admitted that "the goal of the 'second phase' of the war is not victory over the mythical Nazis, but simply the occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine".


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: According to Russian sources, the official representative of the LPR forces, Andrey Marochko, stated that in order to secure the LPR land, their, DPR and Russian forces must push the Ukrainian forces away from the LPR's borders for no less than 300 kilometers. The 300 km claim would mean the full Kharkiv Oblast and Donetsk region, parts of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Zaporizhya Oblast, Sumy Oblast and Poltava Oblast. Russian sources said that the LPR's ambassador in Russia, , confirmed that LPR troops would continue to participate in the Donbas offensive, saying the presence of Ukrainian units along the LPR's borders would threaten security.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The ISW assessed that despite Russia's concentration in the east, they still had territorial ambitions beyond Luhansk and Donetsk Oblast.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On the night of 18 April 2022, Russian forces launched an intensive bombardment campaign against positions in Luhansk, Donetsk, and Kharkiv Oblasts. Russian shelling overnight in Donetsk killed two civilians and wounded nine, according to online news sources. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that the "battle for Donbas" had begun. Russian artillery pounded cities in the Donbas, aiming at destroying critical infrastructure.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The head of the Luhansk regional military administration and effective governor of the oblast, Serhiy Haidai, called on the region's residents to evacuate immediately so as to not become hostages or to be killed by the Russians.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: By 25 April, Russian forces achieved a three-to-one numerical supremacy over the Ukrainian forces (the traditional number considered to be the requirement for an attacking force), concentrating upwards of 76 Battalion tactical groups (BTGs) with 800 personnel per BTG in the Donbas.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: In the first week, Russian forces secured full control over Kreminna, advanced in Rubizhne, occupied large areas of Popasna, and continued to shell positions along the front line. According to a Ukrainian official, Russian forces captured 42 villages in the Donetsk Oblast, though she did not specify which villages had been captured.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: In the Slobozhansky and Donetsk operational districts, Russian troops intensified offensive operations in some areas, attempting to break through the Ukrainian defenses along almost the entire front line in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk regions. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government stated their forces launched a counterattack and recaptured the town of Marinka. Libyan and Syrian mercenaries likely associated with the Wagner Group allegedly clashed with Ukrainian forces in Popasna. The Ukrainian government claimed that 20–25 mercenaries had been killed.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Russian forces continued a slow, steady advance, capturing the towns of Popivka, Pischane, Novotoshkivske, Zarichne and Zhytlivka, and prepared to capture and advance past Popasna, advance southeast from Izium and westwards from Kreminna.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Beginning in May, Russian troops launched intensified battles—marked by mass artillery campaigns followed by ground assaults—on Ukrainian positions across the front line.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: By 7 May, the now largely destroyed city of Popasna was captured by Russian and Luhansk People Republic forces, with this being confirmed by the regional governor. By 12 May, it was reported that Russian forces had seized Rubizhne.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: From 5–13 May, a major battle on the Donets river took place, with Ukrainian defenders successfully repelling multiple Russian attempts to cross the strategic river. The Ukrainian armed forces claimed to have destroyed an entire battalion of Russian forces, killing up to 1,000–1,500 soldiers. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank reported that out of a force of 550 Russian troops, 485 were killed and wounded, as well as 80 vehicles lost.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Ukraine claimed to have launched a counterattack against Russian forces near Izium on 15 May. On the same day, it was reported that Russian forces had captured the village of Dovhen'ke, south of Izium.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: In late May, Russian forces made breakthroughs in many regions across the front line. Russian troops were seen to be using a new "cauldron" approach to their efforts, abandoning large encirclements in favor of smaller ones, which enabled them to make the first major gains of the battle.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 20 May, Russian forces made further advances in the west and south of Popasna, with the aim of cutting off the road to Sievierodonetsk. Despite stiff Ukrainian resistance, Russian forces finally broke through in the Popasna area on 20 May. By 22 May, Russian forces managed to secure their route of advance and attempted to simultaneously push west towards Bakhmut and north to cut off-road links to Sievierodonetsk.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Russian forces were reported entering the town of Lyman on 23 May, fully capturing it by the 26th, whereas Ukrainian forces were reported leaving Sviatohirsk. By 24 May, Russian forces captured the town of Svitlodarsk.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 1 June, Ukraine announced that 7080% of Sieverodonetsk had been captured by Russian forces. On 3 June, Ukraine claimed to have launched a counterattack to take back 20% of the city. On 8 June, however, the Ukrainian Army was pushed back to the outskirts of the city.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: By mid-June, the general consensus in the military community was that Ukraine was almost out of ammunition and was heavily outgunned. A senior Ukrainian military official added that Ukraine was reliant on the West to supply weapons, as Russia had an advantage of 10 to 15 times more artillery systems than Ukraine, and that Western rocket systems were needed to destroy Russian artillery. Furthermore, despite Ukrainian forces using 5,000-6,000 rounds a day, specifically 155 mm Western-supplied rounds, they were still outgunned up to 40-to-1 in some locations.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: With the breakthrough near Popasna significantly slowed by Ukrainian heavy guns, Russia began an offensive to the southeast of Popasna, aiming to bypass the Siverskyi Donets river and bombard Lysychansk from the south. The ISW assessed that Russian commanders had been given the deadline of 26 June to make a breakthrough and seize Luhansk Oblast's full administrative territory.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: By 23 June, Russia had fully broken through in the south, seizing Toshkivka and making major gains south of Lysychansk. Russian forces captured , Myrna Dolyna, and all on 22 June. On 23 June, Russian forces cut off and surrounded the towns of Hirske and Zolote, which they claimed to have fully captured by next day. In addition, Russia made a push to fully secure the Azot chemical plant in Sievierodonetsk, which by 14 June had become the last refuge for Ukrainian soldiers in the city. From the north, Russian troops were less successful, attempting to make breakthroughs near Mykolaivka and Bohorodychne, in an attempt to advance on the Donetsk city of Sloviansk. Nonetheless, the Russian advance ground on, with Russia's breakthrough in the south putting pressure on the few remaining Ukrainian defenders of Luhansk Oblast to withdraw to defensive lines near the border with Donetsk Oblast.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Russian forces had fully encircled Hirske and Zolote in their drive north to Lysychansk by 24 June. Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces had suffered over 1,000 casualties, including 800 prisoners, in Hirske, Zolote and near Lysychansk over the previous two days. By 25 June, Ukrainian officials had announced that their troops had retreated from Sievierodonetsk in order to avoid being surrounded by Russian troops, signalling the city's capture. By 1 July, Russian forces continued encircling Lysychansk from the south and west, attempting to cut off the T1302 Lysychansk-Bakhmut highway from the city. As part of the encirclement, Russian forces claimed to have also seized Pryvillia, northwest of Lysychansk, after units made river crossings to the north and west of the town. Ukrainian positions near Siversk, Bilohorivka, Vovchoyarivka, Berestove, Yakovlivka, Vidrodzhennia, Mayorsk, and the Vuhlehirska thermal power plant were shelled by artillery.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 2–3 July, Russia and LPR separatist forces claimed to have captured and controlled Lysychansk, however Ukrainian officials, including president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had yet to officially acknowledge the strategic city's capture, only saying there were ongoing fierce clashes for the city. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) supported the Russian claim that Lysychansk had fallen on 2 July, suggesting the Ukrainian defenders likely "deliberately withdrew" from the city. Furthermore, the Russian defence ministry claimed to have captured and were in the process of clearing many settlements on the Lysychansk outskirts, including Verkhnekamenka, Zolotarivka, Bilohorivka, Novodruzhesk, Maloryazantsevo, and Bila Hora. Ukrainian officials subsequently conceded that Lysychansk was captured.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: With the fall of Lysychansk and its western outskirts, Russia and the Luhansk People's Republic declared full control of Luhansk Oblast for the first time, achieving an objective of the Russian-led campaign. Russian shelling of Sloviansk intensified on 3 July.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: After fully capturing and occupying Luhansk Oblast, Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered defence minister Sergei Shoigu to continue the offensive in Donbas as planned, adding that units that fought on the Luhansk front "should certainly rest and increase their combat capabilities." According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russian forces made no claimed or assessed territorial gains "for the first time in 133 days of war" and suggested that Russia was likely taking an "operational pause" to rest and regroup its forces before a planned renewed assault. The UK defence ministry expected the city of Siversk to be the immediate tactical objective of their renewed assault.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: An intelligence briefing by the UK defence ministry on 4 July said Russian forces would "almost certainly" transition to capturing the rest of Donetsk Oblast, around 55 percent of which was already in control by Russian and Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) separatist forces. The ministry predicted the fighting in Donetsk would continue to be "grinding and attritional," typified by massive artillery shelling leveling towns and cities amid slow ground advances. Ukraine's governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai said he expected Donetsk cities such as Sloviansk and Bakhmut to soon come under heavy Russian attack, and said both cities were increasingly being shelled. Similar to UK intelligence reports, the Ukrainians expected the Russians to push west along the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway. On 5 July, the mayor of Sloviansk, , urged residents to evacuate the city. "The nearest Russian positions are 7-10 km from the city," said Liakh. The governor of Donetsk Oblast, Pavlo Kyrylenko, urged the 350,000 remaining residents to evacuate the province.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai claimed that an attempt by Russian regular and reserve troops to expand a bridgehead on the Donets river had been stalled by a Ukrainian artillery attack. Pro-Russian sources claimed the village of Spirne had been captured and advances were made during renewed ground assaults on the northern Donetsk village of Verkhnokamyansk; the claims were not independently confirmed at the time. Reportedly, both Russian and Ukrainian sources confirmed Ukrainian forces had recaptured the village of Solodke in a limited counterattack.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 11 July, President Zelenskyy dismissed the notion that there was an ongoing "operational pause" by the Russians, citing continued deadly shelling, air strikes, and continued reports of Ukrainian troops "repelling" various Russian assaults. Zelenskyy insisted that 34 Russian airstrikes in the past 24 hours were not indicative of an "operational pause".


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 16 July, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the operational pause had effectively finished.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: By 17 July, Russian forces were in control of 55% of Donetsk Oblast. Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) Deputy Minister of Information Daniil Bezsonov stated on 25 July that the DPR expected to capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast by the end of August. Various Russian and Western sources had previously reported that Russia intended to hold referendums in occupied areas by the first half of September, likely sometime around September 11, which is the unified voting day in the Russian Federation.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Between 17–20 July, Russian forces conducted repeated ground assaults east of Siversk and south of Bakhmut, but no major advancements were reported along the front line, with the Ukrainians claiming to have repelled many local assaults. On 21 July, the British defence ministry warned that the Russians were closing in on the Vuhlehirska Power Station, the second largest power plant in Ukraine, and were attempting to make a breakthrough there.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 25 July, Russian forces gained control of Berestove. An LPR representative posted video footage of Wagner Group mercenaries in front of the entrance sign to Novoluhanske online, indicating that Russian troops had advanced into the town located roughly 25 km southeast of the Bakhmut outskirts. Several Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces had captured the Vuhlehirska power plant, located on the northern edge of Novoluhanske, and were actively clearing it, meanwhile the Ukrainian General Staff reported that the Russians only had "partial success" on that front. Pro-Russian sources said Wagner mercenary fighters took part in storming the power station and the fighting lasted several days before the plant was fully controlled by 26 July. The ISW suggested Ukrainian troops likely conducted a "controlled withdrawal" from the Vuhlehirska reservoir area north-west towards Semyhirya. A Ukrainian official confirmed the power plant's capture on 27 July.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 26 July, the Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces were fighting in the village of Semyhirya, west of the Vuhlehirska power plant. On 27 July, geolocated video footage posted online showed that Wagner mercenaries had reached Klynove, while pro-Russian Telegram channel Readovka claimed that Russian forces established control over Pokrovske. On 28 July, the Ukrainian General Staff said the Russians made small gains near Soledar and Vershyna and resumed assaults on Avdiivka and Pisky. The Ukrainians accused Russian troops of wearing Ukrainian uniforms during their ground assaults. The Ukrainian military claimed to have neutralised 270 Russian and pro-Russian troops and destroyed seven tanks on 28 July, and that that they successfully repelled all assaults on Soledar-Vershnya and the Avdiivka-Pisky fronts. However, the separatists claimed Russian and DPR forces in the Avdiivka area had made significant advances north and east of the city.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 29 July, an explosion killed and wounded scores of Ukrainian POWs in Russian-occupied Olenivka. As of 30 July, the perpetrator of the attack remained disputed. On 30 July, President Zelenskyy ordered all remaining civilians in the Donetsk region to evacuate. Between 200,000 and 220,000 civilians still lived in the unoccupied territory of Donetsk Oblast, according to Ukrainian estimates.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 1 August, the British defence ministry said Russia had made slow progress on the Bakhmut axis during daily assaults in the last four days. Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai alleged that Russian forces were attempting to recruit and mobilise residents in LPR-controlled cities such as Alchevsk. On 2 August, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu stated that Russian forces had captured six front line settlements in recent days: Berestove, Pokrovske, Novoluhanske, Semyhiria, Hryhorivka, and Stryapivka. On the same day, Russian forces captured Ukrainian positions around the Butivka Coal mine, southwest of Avdiivka, dislodging Ukrainian positions that had been held there since 2015. The Ukrainian General Staff also stated that Russian forces had "partial success" along the Vidrozhennya-Kodema line, about 20 km southeast of Bakhmut.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 5 August, Russian sources claimed that Russian troops were actively fighting at the Knauf Gips Donbas gypsum factory on the southeastern outskirts of Soledar. Meanwhile, separatist authorities claimed that separate DPR brigades and Wagner Group forces had taken control of half of Marinka, but the Ukrainians reported the assaults on Marinka were unsuccessful. Geolocated footage posted by DPR troops also suggested Travneve was likely captured by this day. On 6 August, combat footage confirmed that Russian forces advanced into the eastern outskirts of Marinka. On 7 August, Russian forces pierced through the defenses of Pisky and reached the center of the settlement. Russian sources claimed the villages of Volodymyrivka and Stryapivka, located southeast of Soledar, were captured by 9 August. On 10 August, the DPR claimed to have captured Hladosove, west of Travneve. On 11 August, Russian and DPR sources claimed that roughly 90 percent of Pisky had been captured, and combat footage purportedly showed the Russians bombarding the village with TOS-1A thermobaric artillery. The Russian defence ministry claimed to have fully captured Pisky by 14 August, but the Ukrainian military denied that it had been captured. The ISW assessed that Pisky had been captured by 24 August.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 29 August, Russian and DPR forces claimed to have captured Kodema, west of Semyhiria and 13 km southwest of Bakhmut, however the Ukrainian General Staff reported to have repelled the advance on the settlement. Russian and separatist forces, including elements of Wagner mercenaries, were reportedly continuing to fight for control of Kodema on 31 August until finally capturing it on 6 September. The DPR's 3rd Brigade claimed they were also advancing from the outskirts of Horlivka (20 km south of Bakhmut), while Russian sources claimed that the 11th DPR Regiment took control of a bridge on the road that runs between Pisky and Pervomaiske (both on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk city) and were continuing efforts to advance westward towards Pervomaiske.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On September 6, Ukrainian forces began a surprise counter-offensive on the Kharkiv front that resulted in Russian forces retreating over 1,000 square kilometres (390 sq mi) east, significantly weakening Russian flanks north of Sloviansk and allowing for Ukrainian counter-attacks around the Donetsk city of Lyman, which had been captured by Russian forces in late May.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: By October 2022, Ukrainian forces had retaken several villages and towns in northern Luhansk and in the Svatove Raion in northern Donetsk, including Yatskivka, Novoliubivka, Nevske, Grekivka, Novoyehorivka, Nadiya, Andriivka, and Stelmakhivka, among others. On October 1, Ukrainian forces entered Lyman after a short siege. Russian forces had fallen back to the P-66 highway near the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border, anchored by the settlements of Svatove and Kreminna, the first city to be taken during the battle of Donbas. On 2–3 October, Ukrainian forces began attacking Kreminna and Svatove in an attempt to break the Russian front line along the P-66 in northern Luhansk. Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksii Arestovych claimed Russian losses during the height of the counteroffensive reached up to 500 soldiers killed or wounded per day, however, these claims could not be independently verified. On 15 October, Russian forces reportedly disrupted a Ukrainian Starlink system in the Soledar-Bakhmut area after they destroyed a shortwave repeater.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: By 2 November, the Soledar-Bakhmut-Donetsk city front became the epicenter of fighting in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Russian forces launched a renewed offensive in southern Donetsk Oblast in early November, with Russian troops intensifying their attempts to break through Ukrainian defensive lines in Bakhmut, Soledar, Pavlivka, and Vuhledar. On 11 November, DPR forces were reported to have entered Pavlivka. Russian forces, including Wagner PMC fighters, overran defensive lines south of Bakhmut in late November, reportedly capturing the settlements of Kurdiumivka, Ozarianivka, Zelenopillia, and Andriivka by 30 November, while clashes in Opytne continued. Multiple Russian sources also reported that Wagner fighters had captured and were clearing Yakovlivka, located along Soledar's northeastern flank, by December 7. The Russians claimed to have shot down a Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter in Yakovlika on 8 December. Ukraine was reportedly rotating units in the Donbas by mid–December, particularly from the Kherson front. The 57th Motorized Brigade, 36th Marine Brigade, and the 46th Airmobile Brigade reinforced the Bakhmut front alongside the 24th Mechanized Brigade, relieving the 93rd, which defended Bakhmut and Soledar for months. The 28th Brigade reportedly rotated to Kostiantynivka and the 18th Marine Infantry Battalion, 35th Marine Brigade reinforced Nevelske and Pervomaiske.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: Heavy clashes along the Bakhmut–Soledar axis continued by 10 December, typified by grueling trench warfare, drone warfare, artillery duels, and minor ground assaults amid freezing temperatures. President Zelenskyy accused Russia of having "destroyed" Bakhmut, saying there was "no residential space that hasn't been damaged by shelling for a long time." On 10 December, the Russian defense ministry said their forces made new advances on the Lyman axis. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian General Staff said more than 20 settlements were bombarded in fighting in the Bakhmut area alone. Ukrainian paratroopers of the 71st separate huntsman brigade reported repelling a Russian "sabotage and reconnaissance group" with mortar fire near Bakhmut, "eliminating" at least two attackers. The months-long siege of Marinka continued, with DPR president Denis Pushilin claiming on 15 December that 80 percent of the city had been captured amid ongoing heavy urban combat.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The Ukrainians reportedly increased shelling of Donetsk city in mid-December. DPR authorities said six civilians were killed in the city during shelling in early December. On 15 December, mayor Alexey Kulemzin said that "at approximately 7 a.m." the Ukrainians launched 40 Grad rockets at the city center, damaging residential and commercial buildings and the Transfiguration Cathedral, in what he called "the most massive strike since 2014." One person was killed and nine were wounded. On 16 December, Wagner forces reportedly finished clearing Yakovlika, further threatening Soledar's northeastern flank.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The Ukrainians continued a campaign of targeting Russian ammunition depots and logistics sites in Donetsk province with air strikes and, reportedly, U.S.-supplied M142 HIMARS or M270 rocket artillery systems. Video emerged of an apparent ammunition depot in the Snizhne, Donetsk region exploding, with pro-Ukrainian sources suggesting Ukrainian forces used M142 HIMARS supplied by the U.S. to attack the depot deep behind Russian-DPR front lines. Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian presidential advisor, claimed that continued attacks on Russian ammunition depots and increased Ukrainian artillery supplies from NATO countries were forcing the Russians to conserve artillery shells and rockets for the first time. He argued that if this trend continued, the Ukrainians would, eventually, achieve artillery and logistical superiority on the battlefield in the Donbas. President Zelenskyy, in his nightly public address, also hailed the impact Western-supplied artillery pieces were reportedly having on Russian logistics and strike capabilities. In late July 2022, Ukrainian soldiers and officers fighting in Donetsk offered anecdotal evidence of a significant reduction in Russian artillery fire.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The Mozart Group, a group of former Western soldiers serving as volunteers in Ukraine, are evacuating civilians and offering informal combat training to Ukrainian troops, primarily on casualty care and medical evacuation. Retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Andrew Milburn, the leader of the group, denied Russian accusations of Mozart being "American mercenaries" or a PMC akin to Wagner Group and said Mozart is legally classified as an NGO. In December 2022, Willburn suggested that Wagner fighters were probably targeting Mozart personnel, as three Donbas hotels the group had lodged in had all been hit by missiles. "There's no hotel in Donbas now that will let us stay because they've been told we're being targeted," said Willburn.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The United States assessed in late August 2022 that Russia had received Qods Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series UAVs from Iran over several days that month, as part of a Russian plan to obtain hundreds of such vehicles for use in the invasion of Ukraine; national security adviser Jake Sullivan had warned in July about such a plan. Also according to US sources, Russian operators undertook training in Iran as part of the deal. A US official said in late August that Russia had faced "numerous failures" with the vehicles.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 9 December, Britain's ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward said that the UK was "almost certain" that Russia was procuring weaponry from "North Korea [and] other heavily sanctioned states" to replenish diminishing stocks. Vassily Nebenzia, Russia's ambassador to the UN, denied suggestions that Russia was being supplied by Iran, stating Russia's military–industrial complex "can work perfectly fine and doesn't need anyone's assistance, whereas the Ukrainian military industry does not basically exist and is being assisted by the Western industry."


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The Ukrainian government refrained from providing overall numbers of casualties to their own forces in the Donbas, although they did periodically offer various estimates of daily casualty counts. According to Ukraine, between 50 and 100 Ukrainian soldiers were being killed daily on the Donbas front as of late May. By early June, up to 200 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 800+ wounded daily in the Donbas. By mid-June, some Ukrainian officials estimated that Ukrainian forces were sustaining well over the previous mark of 1,000 casualties per day, including 200-500 killed.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: With respect to Russian casualties, the Ukrainian Operational Command East provided daily casualty claims of Russian troops until 2 July.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: During the fighting, a LPR battalion commander was killed when he and his fighters were surrounded by Ukrainian forces close to Kreminna and "fought to the last", according to the LPR. The clashes left an unknown number of killed and wounded.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: On 18 July, two Americans, a Canadian, and a Swedish national were killed during a Russian tank ambush during clashes near Hryhorivka, northeast of Siversk. The foreign fighters were part of a special operations unit of Ukraine's Territorial Defence Forces.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: According to Ukrainian sources, more than 500 wounded Russian soldiers, most of them recently mobilized, were hospitalized in the occupied city of Horlivka between 10 and 16 of November.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: During the battle, Russia intensified its attacks on civilian areas. 60 civilians were believed to be killed and at least seven wounded due to a Russian airstrike on a school sheltering about 90 civilians in Luhansk Oblast, whereas the bodies of 44 civilians were recovered from rubble underneath an apartment building in Izium. During the battle of Kreminna, near Rubizhne and Lysychansk, Ukrainian forces lost control amid heavy fighting. More than 200 civilians were killed during the battle, with four additional civilians being killed and one more wounded as they attempted to escape the fighting. The Ukrainian government claimed that over 1,500 civilians were killed in Sievierodonetsk on 26 May. On 10 July, a Russian rocket attack in Chasiv Yar struck a multi-story residential building, killing at least 34 people.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: As of 13 November, military activity related to the battle was confirmed to have killed at least 4,950 civilians and wounded over 5,100 more. As of 10 October, the United Nations counted 2,964 civilians killed in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions alone, in addition to 3,683 civilians wounded.


title: Battle of Donbas (2022)

text: The true number of civilian deaths and injuries is guaranteed to be significantly higher. Civilian casualties are impossible to tabulate due to the fog of war and lack of information flow due to the military occupation of segments of Ukrainian territory. For example, according to Ukrainian sources, "thousands" of civilians were killed in Lysychansk, although official data only accounted for 150 killed civilians.


title: Civil war

text: The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.


title: Civil war

text: The term is a calque of Latin "bellum civile" which was used to refer to the various civil wars of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC.


title: Civil war

text: Most modern civil wars involve intervention by outside powers. According to Patrick M. Regan in his book "Civil Wars and Foreign Powers" (2000) about two thirds of the 138 intrastate conflicts between the end of World War II and 2000 saw international intervention, with the United States intervening in 35 of these conflicts.


title: Civil war

text: A civil war is a high-intensity conflict, often involving regular armed forces, that is sustained, organized and large-scale. Civil wars may result in large numbers of casualties and the consumption of significant resources.


title: Civil war

text: Civil wars since the end of World War II have lasted on average just over four years, a dramatic rise from the one-and-a-half-year average of the 1900–1944 period. While the rate of emergence of new civil wars has been relatively steady since the mid-19th century, the increasing length of those wars has resulted in increasing numbers of wars ongoing at any one time. For example, there were no more than five civil wars underway simultaneously in the first half of the 20th century while there were over 20 concurrent civil wars close to the end of the Cold War. Since 1945, civil wars have resulted in the deaths of over 25 million people, as well as the forced displacement of millions more. Civil wars have further resulted in economic collapse; Somalia, Burma (Myanmar), Uganda and Angola are examples of nations that were considered to have had promising futures before being engulfed in civil wars.


title: Civil war

text: James Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University, defines a civil war as "a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies". Ann Hironaka further specifies that one side of a civil war is the state. Stathis Kalyvas defines civil war as "armed combat taking place within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity between parties that are subject to a common authority at the outset of the hostilities." The intensity at which a civil disturbance becomes a civil war is contested by academics. Some political scientists define a civil war as having more than 1,000 casualties, while others further specify that at least 100 must come from each side. The Correlates of War, a dataset widely used by scholars of conflict, classifies civil wars as having over 1000 war-related casualties per year of conflict. This rate is a small fraction of the millions killed in the Second Sudanese Civil War and Cambodian Civil War, for example, but excludes several highly publicized conflicts, such as The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the struggle of the African National Congress in Apartheid-era South Africa.


title: Civil war

text: Based on the 1,000-casualties-per-year criterion, there were 213 civil wars from 1816 to 1997, 104 of which occurred from 1944 to 1997. If one uses the less-stringent 1,000 casualties total criterion, there were over 90 civil wars between 1945 and 2007, with 20 ongoing civil wars as of 2007.


title: Civil war

text: The Geneva Conventions do not specifically define the term "civil war"; nevertheless, they do outline the responsibilities of parties in "armed conflict not of an international character". This includes civil wars; however, no specific definition of civil war is provided in the text of the Conventions.


title: Civil war

text: Nevertheless, the International Committee of the Red Cross has sought to provide some clarification through its commentaries on the Geneva Conventions, noting that the Conventions are "so general, so vague, that many of the delegations feared that it might be taken to cover any act committed by force of arms". Accordingly, the commentaries provide for different 'conditions' on which the application of the Geneva Convention would depend; the commentary, however, points out that these should not be interpreted as rigid conditions. The conditions listed by the ICRC in its commentary are as follows:


title: Civil war

text: (c) That it has accorded the insurgents recognition as belligerents for the purposes only of the present Convention; or


title: Civil war

text: (d) That the dispute has been admitted to the agenda of the Security Council or the General Assembly of the United Nations as being a threat to international peace, a breach of the peace, or an act of aggression.


title: Civil war

text: (b) That the insurgent civil authority exercises de facto authority over the population within a determinate portion of the national territory.


title: Civil war

text: (c) That the armed forces act under the direction of an organized authority and are prepared to observe the ordinary laws of war.


title: Civil war

text: According to a 2017 review study of civil war research, there are three prominent explanations for civil war: greed-based explanations which center on individuals’ desire to maximize their profits, grievance-based explanations which center on conflict as a response to socioeconomic or political injustice, and opportunity-based explanations which center on factors that make it easier to engage in violent mobilization. According to the study, the most influential explanation for civil war onset is the opportunity-based explanation by James Fearon and David Laitin in their 2003 American Political Science Review article.


title: Civil war

text: Scholars investigating the cause of civil war are attracted by two opposing theories, greed versus grievance. Roughly stated: are conflicts caused by differences of ethnicity, religion or other social affiliation, or do conflicts begin because it is in the economic best interests of individuals and groups to start them? Scholarly analysis supports the conclusion that economic and structural factors are more important than those of identity in predicting occurrences of civil war.


title: Civil war

text: A comprehensive study of civil war was carried out by a team from the World Bank in the early 21st century. The study framework, which came to be called the Collier–Hoeffler Model, examined 78 five-year increments when civil war occurred from 1960 to 1999, as well as 1,167 five-year increments of "no civil war" for comparison, and subjected the data set to regression analysis to see the effect of various factors. The factors that were shown to have a statistically significant effect on the chance that a civil war would occur in any given five-year period were:


title: Civil war

text: A high proportion of primary commodities in national exports significantly increases the risk of a conflict. A country at "peak danger", with commodities comprising 32% of gross domestic product, has a 22% risk of falling into civil war in a given five-year period, while a country with no primary commodity exports has a 1% risk. When disaggregated, only petroleum and non-petroleum groupings showed different results: a country with relatively low levels of dependence on petroleum exports is at slightly less risk, while a high level of dependence on oil as an export results in slightly more risk of a civil war than national dependence on another primary commodity. The authors of the study interpreted this as being the result of the ease by which primary commodities may be extorted or captured compared to other forms of wealth; for example, it is easy to capture and control the output of a gold mine or oil field compared to a sector of garment manufacturing or hospitality services.


title: Civil war

text: A second source of finance is national diasporas, which can fund rebellions and insurgencies from abroad. The study found that statistically switching the size of a country's diaspora from the smallest found in the study to the largest resulted in a sixfold increase in the chance of a civil war.


title: Civil war

text: Higher male secondary school enrollment, per capita income and economic growth rate all had significant effects on reducing the chance of civil war. Specifically, a male secondary school enrollment 10% above the average reduced the chance of a conflict by about 3%, while a growth rate 1% higher than the study average resulted in a decline in the chance of a civil war of about 1%. The study interpreted these three factors as proxies for earnings forgone by rebellion, and therefore that lower forgone earnings encourage rebellion. Phrased another way: young males (who make up the vast majority of combatants in civil wars) are less likely to join a rebellion if they are getting an education or have a comfortable salary, and can reasonably assume that they will prosper in the future.


title: Civil war

text: Low per capita income has been proposed as a cause for grievance, prompting armed rebellion. However, for this to be true, one would expect economic inequality to also be a significant factor in rebellions, which it is not. The study therefore concluded that the economic model of opportunity cost better explained the findings.


title: Civil war

text: Most proxies for "grievance"—the theory that civil wars begin because of issues of identity, rather than economics—were statistically insignificant, including economic equality, political rights, ethnic polarization and religious fractionalization. Only ethnic dominance, the case where the largest ethnic group comprises a majority of the population, increased the risk of civil war. A country characterized by ethnic dominance has nearly twice the chance of a civil war. However, the combined effects of ethnic and religious fractionalization, i.e. the greater chance that any two randomly chosen people will be from separate ethnic or religious groups, the less chance of a civil war, were also significant and positive, as long as the country avoided ethnic dominance. The study interpreted this as stating that minority groups are more likely to rebel if they feel that they are being dominated, but that rebellions are more likely to occur the more homogeneous the population and thus more cohesive the rebels. These two factors may thus be seen as mitigating each other in many cases.


title: Civil war

text: David Keen, a professor at the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics is one of the major critics of greed vs. grievance theory, defined primarily by Paul Collier, and argues the point that a conflict, although he cannot define it, cannot be pinpointed to simply one motive. He believes that conflicts are much more complex and thus should not be analyzed through simplified methods. He disagrees with the quantitative research methods of Collier and believes a stronger emphasis should be put on personal data and human perspective of the people in conflict.


title: Civil war

text: Beyond Keen, several other authors have introduced works that either disprove greed vs. grievance theory with empirical data, or dismiss its ultimate conclusion. Authors such as Cristina Bodea and Ibrahim Elbadawi, who co-wrote the entry, "Riots, coups and civil war: Revisiting the greed and grievance debate", argue that empirical data can disprove many of the proponents of greed theory and make the idea "irrelevant". They examine a myriad of factors and conclude that too many factors come into play with conflict, which cannot be confined to simply greed or grievance.


title: Civil war

text: Anthony Vinci makes a strong argument that "fungible concept of power and the primary motivation of survival provide superior explanations of armed group motivation and, more broadly, the conduct of internal conflicts".


title: Civil war

text: James Fearon and David Laitin find that ethnic and religious diversity does not make civil war more likely. They instead find that factors that make it easier for rebels to recruit foot soldiers and sustain insurgencies, such as "poverty—which marks financially & bureaucratically weak states and also favors rebel recruitment—political instability, rough terrain, and large populations" make civil wars more likely.


title: Civil war

text: Such research finds that civil wars happen because the state is weak; both authoritarian and democratic states can be stable if they have the financial and military capacity to put down rebellions.


title: Civil war

text: In a state torn by civil war, the contesting powers often do not have the ability to commit or the trust to believe in the other side's commitment to put an end to war. When considering a peace agreement, the involved parties are aware of the high incentives to withdraw once one of them has taken an action that weakens their military, political or economical power. Commitment problems may deter a lasting peace agreement as the powers in question are aware that neither of them is able to commit to their end of the bargain in the future. States are often unable to escape conflict traps (recurring civil war conflicts) due to the lack of strong political and legal institutions that motivate bargaining, settle disputes, and enforce peace settlements.


title: Civil war

text: Political scientist Barbara F. Walter suggests that most contemporary civil wars are actually repeats of earlier civil wars that often arise when leaders are not accountable to the public, when there is poor public participation in politics, and when there is a lack of transparency of information between the executives and the public. Walter argues that when these issues are properly reversed, they act as political and legal restraints on executive power forcing the established government to better serve the people. Additionally, these political and legal restraints create a standardized avenue to influence government and increase the commitment credibility of established peace treaties. It is the strength of a nation’s institutionalization and good governance—not the presence of democracy nor the poverty level—that is the number one indicator of the chance of a repeat civil war, according to Walter.


title: Civil war

text: High levels of population dispersion and, to a lesser extent, the presence of mountainous terrain, increased the chance of conflict. Both of these factors favor rebels, as a population dispersed outward toward the borders is harder to control than one concentrated in a central region, while mountains offer terrain where rebels can seek sanctuary. Rough terrain was highlighted as one of the more important factors in a 2006 systematic review.


title: Civil war

text: The various factors contributing to the risk of civil war rise increase with population size. The risk of a civil war rises approximately proportionately with the size of a country's population.


title: Civil war

text: There is a correlation between poverty and civil war, but the causality (which causes the other) is unclear. Some studies have found that in regions with lower income per capita, the likelihood of civil war is greater. Economists Simeon Djankov and Marta Reynal-Querol argue that the correlation is spurious, and that lower income and heightened conflict are instead products of other phenomena. In contrast, a study by Alex Braithwaite and colleagues showed systematic evidence of "a causal arrow running from poverty to conflict".


title: Civil war

text: While there is a supposed negative correlation between absolute welfare levels and the probability of civil war outbreak, relative deprivation may actually be a more pertinent possible cause. Historically, higher inequality levels led to higher civil war probability. Since colonial rule or population size are known to increase civil war risk, also, one may conclude that "the discontent of the colonized, caused by the creation of borders across tribal lines and bad treatment by the colonizers" is one important cause of civil conflicts.


title: Civil war

text: The more time that has elapsed since the last civil war, the less likely it is that a conflict will recur. The study had two possible explanations for this: one opportunity-based and the other grievance-based. The elapsed time may represent the depreciation of whatever capital the rebellion was fought over and thus increase the opportunity cost of restarting the conflict. Alternatively, elapsed time may represent the gradual process of healing of old hatreds. The study found that the presence of a diaspora substantially reduced the positive effect of time, as the funding from diasporas offsets the depreciation of rebellion-specific capital.


title: Civil war

text: Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa has argued that an important cause of intergroup conflict may be the relative availability of women of reproductive age. He found that polygyny greatly increased the frequency of civil wars but not interstate wars. Gleditsch et al. did not find a relationship between ethnic groups with polygyny and increased frequency of civil wars but nations having legal polygamy may have more civil wars. They argued that misogyny is a better explanation than polygyny. They found that increased women's rights were associated with fewer civil wars and that legal polygamy had no effect after women's rights were controlled for.


title: Civil war

text: Political scholar Elisabeth Wood from Yale University offers yet another rationale for why civilians rebel and/or support civil war. Through her studies of the Salvadoran Civil War, Wood finds that traditional explanations of greed and grievance are not sufficient to explain the emergence of that insurgent movement. Instead, she argues that "emotional engagements" and "moral commitments" are the main reasons why thousand of civilians, most of them from poor and rural backgrounds, joined or supported the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, despite individually facing both high risks and virtually no foreseeable gains. Wood also attributes participation in the civil war to the value that insurgents assigned to changing social relations in El Salvador, an experience she defines as the "pleasure of agency".


title: Civil war

text: Ann Hironaka, author of "Neverending Wars", divides the modern history of civil wars into the pre-19th century, 19th century to early 20th century, and late 20th century. In 19th-century Europe, the length of civil wars fell significantly, largely due to the nature of the conflicts as battles for the power center of the state, the strength of centralized governments, and the normally quick and decisive intervention by other states to support the government. Following World War II the duration of civil wars grew past the norm of the pre-19th century, largely due to weakness of the many postcolonial states and the intervention by major powers on both sides of conflict. The most obvious commonality to civil wars are that they occur in fragile states.


title: Civil war

text: Civil wars in the 19th century and in the early 20th century tended to be short; civil wars between 1900 and 1944 lasted on average one and half years. The state itself formed the obvious center of authority in the majority of cases, and the civil wars were thus fought for control of the state. This meant that whoever had control of the capital and the military could normally crush resistance. A rebellion which failed to quickly seize the capital and control of the military for itself normally found itself doomed to rapid destruction. For example, the fighting associated with the 1871 Paris Commune occurred almost entirely in Paris, and ended quickly once the military sided with the government at Versailles and conquered Paris.


title: Civil war

text: The power of non-state actors resulted in a lower value placed on sovereignty in the 18th and 19th centuries, which further reduced the number of civil wars. For example, the pirates of the Barbary Coast were recognized as "de facto" states because of their military power. The Barbary pirates thus had no need to rebel against the Ottoman Empire – their nominal state government – to gain recognition of their sovereignty. Conversely, states such as Virginia and Massachusetts in the United States of America did not have sovereign status, but had significant political and economic independence coupled with weak federal control, reducing the incentive to secede.


title: Civil war

text: The two major global ideologies, monarchism and democracy, led to several civil wars. However, a bi-polar world, divided between the two ideologies, did not develop, largely due to the dominance of monarchists through most of the period. The monarchists would thus normally intervene in other countries to stop democratic movements taking control and forming democratic governments, which were seen by monarchists as being both dangerous and unpredictable. The Great Powers (defined in the 1815 Congress of Vienna as the United Kingdom, Habsburg Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia) would frequently coordinate interventions in other nations' civil wars, nearly always on the side of the incumbent government. Given the military strength of the Great Powers, these interventions nearly always proved decisive and quickly ended the civil wars.


title: Civil war

text: There were several exceptions from the general rule of quick civil wars during this period. The American Civil War (1861–1865) was unusual for at least two reasons: it was fought around regional identities as well as political ideologies, and it ended through a war of attrition, rather than with a decisive battle over control of the capital, as was the norm. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) proved exceptional because "both" sides in the struggle received support from intervening great powers: Germany, Italy, and Portugal supported opposition leader Francisco Franco, while France and the Soviet Union supported the government (see proxy war).


title: Civil war

text: In the 1990s, about twenty civil wars were occurring concurrently during an average year, a rate about ten times the historical average since the 19th century. However, the rate of new civil wars had not increased appreciably; the drastic rise in the number of ongoing wars after World War II was a result of the tripling of the average duration of civil wars to over four years. This increase was a result of the increased number of states, the fragility of states formed after 1945, the decline in interstate war, and the Cold War rivalry.


title: Civil war

text: Following World War II, the major European powers divested themselves of their colonies at an increasing rate: the number of ex-colonial states jumped from about 30 to almost 120 after the war. The rate of state formation leveled off in the 1980s, at which point few colonies remained. More states also meant more states in which to have long civil wars. Hironaka statistically measures the impact of the increased number of ex-colonial states as increasing the post-World War II incidence of civil wars by +165% over the pre-1945 number.


title: Civil war

text: While the new ex-colonial states appeared to follow the blueprint of the idealized state—centralized government, territory enclosed by defined borders, and citizenry with defined rights—as well as accessories such as a national flag, an anthem, a seat at the United Nations and an official economic policy, they were in actuality far weaker than the Western states they were modeled after. In Western states, the structure of governments closely matched states' actual capabilities, which had been arduously developed over centuries. The development of strong administrative structures, in particular those related to extraction of taxes, is closely associated with the intense warfare between predatory European states in the 17th and 18th centuries, or in Charles Tilly's famous formulation: "War made the state and the state made war". For example, the formation of the modern states of Germany and Italy in the 19th century is closely associated with the wars of expansion and consolidation led by Prussia and Sardinia-Piedmont, respectively. The Western process of forming effective and impersonal bureaucracies, developing efficient tax systems, and integrating national territory continued into the 20th century. Nevertheless, Western states that survived into the latter half of the 20th century were considered "strong" by simple reason that they had managed to develop the institutional structures and military capability required to survive predation by their fellow states.


title: Civil war

text: In sharp contrast, decolonization was an entirely different process of state formation. Most imperial powers had not foreseen a need to prepare their colonies for independence; for example, Britain had given limited self-rule to India and Sri Lanka, while treating British Somaliland as little more than a trading post, while all major decisions for French colonies were made in Paris and Belgium prohibited any self-government up until it suddenly granted independence to its colonies in 1960. Like Western states of previous centuries, the new ex-colonies lacked autonomous bureaucracies, which would make decisions based on the benefit to society as a whole, rather than respond to corruption and nepotism to favor a particular interest group. In such a situation, factions manipulate the state to benefit themselves or, alternatively, state leaders use the bureaucracy to further their own self-interest. The lack of credible governance was compounded by the fact that most colonies were economic loss-makers at independence, lacking both a productive economic base and a taxation system to effectively extract resources from economic activity. Among the rare states profitable at decolonization was India, to which scholars credibly argue that Uganda, Malaysia and Angola may be included. Neither did imperial powers make territorial integration a priority, and may have discouraged nascent nationalism as a danger to their rule. Many newly independent states thus found themselves impoverished, with minimal administrative capacity in a fragmented society, while faced with the expectation of immediately meeting the demands of a modern state. Such states are considered "weak" or "fragile". The "strong"-"weak" categorization is not the same as "Western"-"non-Western", as some Latin American states like Argentina and Brazil and Middle Eastern states like Egypt and Israel are considered to have "strong" administrative structures and economic infrastructure.


title: Civil war

text: Historically, the international community would have targeted weak states for territorial absorption or colonial domination or, alternatively, such states would fragment into pieces small enough to be effectively administered and secured by a local power. However, international norms towards sovereignty changed in the wake of World War II in ways that support and maintain the existence of weak states. Weak states are given "de jure" sovereignty equal to that of other states, even when they do not have "de facto" sovereignty or control of their own territory, including the privileges of international diplomatic recognition and an equal vote in the United Nations. Further, the international community offers development aid to weak states, which helps maintain the facade of a functioning modern state by giving the appearance that the state is capable of fulfilling its implied responsibilities of control and order. The formation of a strong international law regime and norms against territorial aggression is strongly associated with the dramatic drop in the number of interstate wars, though it has also been attributed to the effect of the Cold War or to the changing nature of economic development. Consequently, military aggression that results in territorial annexation became increasingly likely to prompt international condemnation, diplomatic censure, a reduction in international aid or the introduction of economic sanction, or, as in the case of 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, international military intervention to reverse the territorial aggression. Similarly, the international community has largely refused to recognize secessionist regions, while keeping some secessionist self-declared states such as Somaliland in diplomatic recognition limbo. While there is not a large body of academic work examining the relationship, Hironaka's statistical study found a correlation that suggests that every major international anti-secessionist declaration increased the number of ongoing civil wars by +10%, or a total +114% from 1945 to 1997. The diplomatic and legal protection given by the international community, as well as economic support to weak governments and discouragement of secession, thus had the unintended effect of encouraging civil wars.


title: Civil war

text: There has been an enormous amount of international intervention in civil wars since 1945 that some have argued served to extend wars. According to Patrick M. Regan in his book "Civil Wars and Foreign Powers" (2000) about 2/3rds of the 138 intrastate conflicts between the end of World War II and 2000 saw international intervention, with the United States intervening in 35 of these conflicts. While intervention has been practiced since the international system has existed, its nature changed substantially. It became common for both the state and opposition group to receive foreign support, allowing wars to continue well past the point when domestic resources had been exhausted. Superpowers, such as the European great powers, had always felt no compunction in intervening in civil wars that affected their interests, while distant regional powers such as the United States could declare the interventionist Monroe Doctrine of 1821 for events in its Central American "backyard". However, the large population of weak states after 1945 allowed intervention by former colonial powers, regional powers and neighboring states who themselves often had scarce resources.


title: Civil war

text: The effectiveness of intervention is widely debated, in part because the data suffers from selection bias; as Fortna has argued, peacekeepers select themselves into difficult cases. When controlling for this effect, Forta holds that peacekeeping is resoundingly successful in shortening wars. However, other scholars disagree. Knaus and Stewart are extremely skeptical as to the effectiveness of interventions, holding that they can only work when they are performed with extreme caution and sensitivity to context, a strategy they label 'principled incrementalism'. Few interventions, for them, have demonstrated such an approach. Other scholars offer more specific criticisms; Dube and Naidu, for instance, show that US military aid, a less conventional form of intervention, seems to be siphoned off to paramilitaries thus exacerbating violence. Weinstein holds more generally that interventions might disrupt processes of 'autonomous recovery' whereby civil war contributes to state-building.


title: Civil war

text: On average, a civil war with interstate intervention was 300% longer than those without. When disaggregated, a civil war with intervention on only one side is 156% longer, while when intervention occurs on both sides the average civil war is longer by an additional 92%. If one of the intervening states was a superpower, a civil war is a further 72% longer; a conflict such as the Angolan Civil War, in which there is two-sided foreign intervention, including by a superpower (actually, two superpowers in the case of Angola), would be 538% longer on average than a civil war without any international intervention.


title: Civil war

text: The Cold War (1947–1991) provided a global network of material and ideological support that often helped perpetuate civil wars, which were mainly fought in weak ex-colonial states rather than the relatively strong states that were aligned with the Warsaw Pact and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In some cases, superpowers would superimpose Cold War ideology onto local conflicts, while in others local actors using Cold War ideology would attract the attention of a superpower to obtain support. Using a separate statistical evaluation than used above for interventions, civil wars that included pro- or anti-communist forces lasted 141% longer than the average non-Cold War conflict, while a Cold War civil war that attracted superpower intervention resulted in wars typically lasting over three times as long as other civil wars. Conversely, the end of the Cold War marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 resulted in a reduction in the duration of Cold War civil wars of 92% or, phrased another way, a roughly ten-fold increase in the rate of resolution of Cold War civil wars. Lengthy Cold War-associated civil conflicts that ground to a halt include the wars of Guatemala (1960–1996), El Salvador (1979–1991) and Nicaragua (1970–1990).


title: Civil war

text: According to Barbara F. Walter, "post-2003 civil wars are different from previous civil wars in three striking ways. First, most of them are situated in Muslim-majority countries. Second, most of the rebel groups fighting these wars espouse radical Islamist ideas and goals. Third, most of these radical groups are pursuing transnational rather than national aims." She argues "that the transformation of information technology, especially the advent of the Web 2.0 in the early 2000s, is the big new innovation that is likely driving many of these changes."


title: Civil war

text: Civil wars often have severe economic consequences: two studies estimate that each year of civil war reduces a country's GDP growth by about 2%. It also has a regional effect, reducing the GDP growth of neighboring countries. Civil wars also have the potential to lock the country in a conflict trap, where each conflict increases the likelihood of future conflict.


title: Feces

text: Feces (or faeces), known colloquially and in slang as poo and poop, are the solid or semi-solid remains of food that was not digested in the small intestine, and has been broken down by bacteria in the large intestine. Feces contain a relatively small amount of metabolic waste products such as bacterially altered bilirubin, and dead epithelial cells from the lining of the gut.


title: Feces

text: Feces can be used as fertilizer or soil conditioner in agriculture. They can also be burned as fuel or dried and used for construction. Some medicinal uses have been found. In the case of human feces, fecal transplants or fecal bacteriotherapy are in use. Urine and feces together are called excreta.


title: Feces

text: The distinctive odor of feces is due to skatole, and thiols (sulfur-containing compounds), as well as amines and carboxylic acids. Skatole is produced from tryptophan via indoleacetic acid. Decarboxylation gives skatole.


title: Feces

text: The perceived bad odor of feces has been hypothesized to be a deterrent for humans, as consuming or touching it may result in sickness or infection.


title: Feces

text: Feces are discharged through the anus or cloaca during defecation. This process requires pressures that may reach (13.3 kPa) in humans and (60 kPa) in penguins. The forces required to expel the feces is generated through muscular contractions and a build-up of gases inside the gut, prompting the sphincter to relieve the pressure and to release the feces.


title: Feces

text: After an animal has digested eaten material, the remains of that material are discharged from its body as waste. Although it is lower in energy than the food from which it is derived, feces may retain a large amount of energy, often 50% of that of the original food. This means that of all food eaten, a significant amount of energy remains for the decomposers of ecosystems. Many organisms feed on feces, from bacteria to fungi to insects such as dung beetles, who can sense odors from long distances. Some may specialize in feces, while others may eat other foods. Feces serve not only as a basic food, but also as a supplement to the usual diet of some animals. This process is known as coprophagia, and occurs in various animal species such as young elephants eating the feces of their mothers to gain essential gut flora, or by other animals such as dogs, rabbits, and monkeys.


title: Feces

text: Feces and urine, which reflect ultraviolet light, are important to raptors such as kestrels, who can see the near ultraviolet and thus find their prey by their middens and territorial markers.


title: Feces

text: Seeds also may be found in feces. Animals who eat fruit are known as frugivores. An advantage for a plant in having fruit is that animals will eat the fruit and unknowingly disperse the seed in doing so. This mode of seed dispersal is highly successful, as seeds dispersed around the base of a plant are unlikely to succeed and often are subject to heavy predation. Provided the seed can withstand the pathway through the digestive system, it is not only likely to be far away from the parent plant, but is even provided with its own fertilizer.


title: Feces

text: Organisms that subsist on dead organic matter or "detritus" are known as detritivores, and play an important role in ecosystems by recycling organic matter back into a simpler form that plants and other autotrophs may absorb once again. This cycling of matter is known as the biogeochemical cycle. To maintain nutrients in soil it is therefore important that feces returns to the area from which they came, which is not always the case in human society where food may be transported from rural areas to urban populations and then feces disposed of into a river or sea.


title: Feces

text: Depending on the individual and the circumstances, human beings may defecate several times a day, every day, or once every two or three days. Extensive hardening of the feces that interrupts this routine for several days or more is called constipation.


title: Feces

text: The appearance of human fecal matter varies according to diet and health. Normally it is semisolid, with a mucus coating. A combination of bile and bilirubin, which comes from dead red blood cells, gives feces the typical brown color.


title: Feces

text: After the meconium, the first stool expelled, a newborn's feces contains only bile, which gives it a yellow-green color. Breast feeding babies expel soft, pale yellowish, and not quite malodorous matter; but once the baby begins to eat, and the body starts expelling bilirubin from dead red blood cells, its matter acquires the familiar brown color.


title: Feces

text: At different times in their life, human beings will expel feces of different colors and textures. A stool that passes rapidly through the intestines will look greenish; lack of bilirubin will make the stool look like clay.


title: Feces

text: Animals such as the giant panda and zebra possess gut bacteria capable of producing biofuel. The bacterium in question, Brocadia anammoxidans, can be used to synthesize the rocket fuel hydrazine.


title: Feces

text: A coprolite is fossilized feces and is classified as a trace fossil. In paleontology they give evidence about the diet of an animal. They were first described by William Buckland in 1829. Prior to this, they were known as "fossil fir cones" and "bezoar stones". They serve a valuable purpose in paleontology because they provide direct evidence of the predation and diet of extinct organisms. Coprolites may range in size from a few millimetres to more than 60 centimetres.


title: Feces

text: Palaeofeces are ancient feces, often found as part of archaeological excavations or surveys. Intact paleofeces of ancient people may be found in caves in arid climates and in other locations with suitable preservation conditions. These are studied to determine the diet and health of the people who produced them through the analysis of seeds, small bones, and parasite eggs found inside. Feces may contain information about the person excreting the material as well as information about the material. They also may be analyzed chemically for more in-depth information on the individual who excreted them, using lipid analysis and ancient DNA analysis. The success rate of usable DNA extraction is relatively high in paleofeces, making it more reliable than skeletal DNA retrieval.


title: Feces

text: The reason this analysis is possible at all is due to the digestive system not being entirely efficient, in the sense that not everything that passes through the digestive system is destroyed. Not all of the surviving material is recognizable, but some of it is. Generally, this material is the best indicator archaeologists can use to determine ancient diets, as no other part of the archaeological record is so direct an indicator.


title: Feces

text: A process that preserves feces in a way that they may be analyzed later is the Maillard reaction. This reaction creates a casing of sugar that preserves the feces from the elements. To extract and analyze the information contained within, researchers generally have to freeze the feces and grind it up into powder for analysis.


title: Feces

text: Animal dung occasionally is used as a cement to make adobe mudbrick huts, or even in throwing sports, especially with cow and camel dung.


title: Feces

text: "Kopi luwak" (pronounced ), or "civet coffee", is coffee made from coffee berries that have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian palm civet ("Paradoxurus hermaphroditus"). Giant pandas provide fertilizer for the world's most expensive green tea. In Malaysia, tea is made from the droppings of stick insects fed on guava leaves.


title: Feces

text: In northern Thailand, elephants are used to digest coffee beans in order to make Black Ivory coffee, which is among the world's most expensive coffees. Paper is also made from elephant dung in the country.


title: Feces

text: Dog feces was used in the tanning process of leather during the Victorian era. Collected dog feces, known as "pure", "puer", or "pewer", was mixed with water to form a substance known as "bate", because proteolytic enzymes in the dog feces helped to relax the fibrous structure of the hide before the final stages of tanning. Dog feces collectors were known as "pure finders".


title: Feces

text: Elephants, hippos, koalas and pandas are born with sterile intestines, and require bacteria obtained from eating the feces of their mothers to digest vegetation.


title: Feces

text: In India, cow dung and cow urine are major ingredients of the traditional Hindu drink "Panchagavya". Politician Shankarbhai Vegad stated that they can cure cancer.


title: Feces

text: In the Middle East, cow dung is consumed for a variety of reasons, such as curing dysentery, a belief of healing properties or as a food staple.


title: Feces

text: Feces is the scientific terminology, while the term stool is also commonly used in medical contexts. Outside of scientific contexts, these terms are less common, with the most common layman's term being "poop" or "poo". The term shit is also in common use, although is widely considered vulgar or offensive. There are many other terms, see below.


title: Feces

text: The word "faeces" is the plural of the Latin word "faex" meaning "dregs". In most English-language usage, there is no singular form, making the word a plurale tantum; out of various major dictionaries, only one enters variation from plural agreement.


title: Feces

text: "Feces" is used more in biology and medicine than in other fields (reflecting science's tradition of classical Latin and New Latin)


title: Feces

text: There are many synonyms in informal registers for feces, just like there are for urine. Many are euphemismistic, colloquial, or both; some are profane (such as "shit"), whereas most belong chiefly to child-directed speech (such as "poo" or the palindromic word "poop") or to crude humor (such as "crap, dump, load" and "turd".).


title: Feces

text: In all human cultures, feces elicits varying degrees of disgust in adults. Children under two years typically have no disgust response to it, suggesting it is culturally derived. Disgust toward feces appears to be strongest in cultures where flush toilets make olfactory contact with human feces minimal. Disgust is experienced primarily in relation to the sense of taste (either perceived or imagined) and, secondarily to anything that causes a similar feeling by sense of smell, touch, or vision.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: The 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, also known as the 1993 October Coup, Black October, the Shooting of the White House or Ukaz 1400, was a political stand-off and a constitutional crisis between the Russian president Boris Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation that was resolved by Yeltsin using military force.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: The relations between the president and the parliament had been deteriorating for some time. The power struggle reached its crisis on 21 September 1993, when President Yeltsin intended to dissolve the country's highest body (Congress of People's Deputies) and parliament (Supreme Soviet), although the constitution did not give the president the power to do so. Yeltsin justified his orders by the results of the referendum of April 1993, although many in Russia both then and now claim that referendum was not won fairly.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: In response, the parliament declared the president's decision null and void, impeached Yeltsin and proclaimed vice president Aleksandr Rutskoy to be acting president. On 3 October, demonstrators removed militia cordons around the parliament and, urged by their leaders, took over the Mayor's offices and tried to storm the Ostankino television centre. The army, which had initially declared its neutrality, stormed the Supreme Soviet building in the early morning hours of 4 October by Yeltsin's order, and arrested the leaders of the resistance. At the climax of the crisis, Russia was thought by some to be "on the brink" of civil war. The ten-day conflict became the deadliest single event of street fighting in Moscow's history since the October Revolution.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: The Soviet Union broke up on 26 December 1991. In Russia, Yeltsin's economic reform program took effect on 2 January 1992. Soon afterward, prices skyrocketed, government spending was slashed, and heavy new taxes went into effect. A deep credit crunch shut down many industries and led to a protracted depression. As a result, unemployment reached record levels. The program began to lose support, and the ensuing political confrontation between Yeltsin on one side, and the opposition to radical economic reform on the other, became increasingly centered in the two branches of government.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: Throughout 1992, opposition to Yeltsin's reform policies grew stronger and more intractable among bureaucrats concerned about the condition of Russian industry and among regional leaders who wanted more independence from Moscow. Russia's vice president, Aleksandr Rutskoy, denounced the Yeltsin program as "economic genocide". From 1991 to 1998 the first seven years of Yeltsin's incumbency, the Russian Gross Domestic Product (measured by purchasing power parity) went from over two trillion U.S. dollars annually to less than one and a quarter trillion U.S. per annum. The United States provided an estimated $2.58 billion of official aid to Russia during the eight years of Clinton's presidency, to build a new economic system, and he encouraged American businesses to invest. Leaders of oil-rich republics such as Tatarstan and Bashkiria called for full independence from Russia.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: Also throughout 1992, Yeltsin wrestled with the Supreme Soviet (the standing legislature) and the Russian Congress of People's Deputies (the country's highest legislative body, from which the Supreme Soviet members were drawn) for control over government and government policy. In 1992 the speaker of the Russian Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov, came out in opposition to the reforms, despite claiming to support Yeltsin's overall goals.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: The president was concerned about the terms of the constitutional amendments passed in late 1991, which meant that his special powers of decree were set to expire by the end of 1992 (Yeltsin expanded the powers of the presidency beyond normal constitutional limits in carrying out the reform program). Yeltsin, awaiting implementation of his privatization program, demanded that parliament reinstate his decree powers (only parliament had the authority to replace or amend the constitution). But in the Russian Congress of People's Deputies and in the Supreme Soviet, the deputies refused to adopt a new constitution that would enshrine the scope of presidential powers demanded by Yeltsin into law.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: Another cause of conflict also called repeated refusal of the Congress of People's Deputies to ratify the Belavezh Accords on the termination of the existence of the USSR and to exclude from the text of the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1978 references to the Constitution and laws of the USSR.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: During its December session, the parliament clashed with Yeltsin on a number of issues, and the conflict came to a head on 9 December when the parliament refused to confirm Yegor Gaidar, the widely unpopular architect of Russia's "shock therapy" market liberalisations, as prime minister. The parliament refused to nominate Gaidar, demanding modifications of the economic program and directed the Central Bank, which was under the parliament's control, to continue issuing credits to enterprises to keep them from shutting down.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: In an angry speech the next day on 10 December, Yeltsin accused the Congress of blocking the government's reforms and suggested the people decide on a referendum, "which course do the citizens of Russia support? The course of the President, a course of transformations, or the course of the Congress, the Supreme Soviet and its Chairman, a course towards folding up reforms, and ultimately towards the deepening of the crisis." Parliament responded by voting to take control of the army.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: On 12 December, Yeltsin and parliament speaker Khasbulatov agreed on a compromise that included the following provisions: (1) a national referendum on framing a new Russian constitution to be held in April 1993; (2) most of Yeltsin's emergency powers were extended until the referendum; (3) the parliament asserted its right to nominate and vote on its own choices for prime minister; and (4) the parliament asserted its right to reject the president's choices to head the Defense, Foreign Affairs, Interior, and Security ministries. Yeltsin nominated Viktor Chernomyrdin to be prime minister on 14 December, and the parliament confirmed him.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: Yeltsin's December 1992 compromise with the seventh Congress of the People's Deputies temporarily backfired. Early 1993 saw increasing tension between Yeltsin and the parliament over the language of the referendum and power sharing. In a series of collisions over policy, the congress whittled away the president's extraordinary powers, which it had granted him in late 1991. The legislature, marshaled by Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov, began to sense that it could block and even defeat the president. The tactic that it adopted was gradually to erode presidential control over the government. In response, the president called a referendum on a constitution for 11 April.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: The eighth Congress of People's Deputies opened on 10 March 1993 with a strong attack on the president by Khasbulatov, who accused Yeltsin of acting unconstitutionally. In mid-March, an emergency session of the Congress of People's Deputies voted to amend the constitution, strip Yeltsin of many of his powers, and cancel the scheduled April referendum, again opening the door to legislation that would shift the balance of power away from the president. The president stalked out of the congress. Vladimir Shumeyko, first deputy prime minister, declared that the referendum would go ahead, but on 25 April.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: The parliament was gradually expanding its influence over the government. On 16 March, the president signed a decree that conferred Cabinet rank on Viktor Gerashchenko, chairman of the central bank, and three other officials; this was in accordance with the decision of the eighth congress that these officials should be members of the government. The congress' ruling, however, had made it clear that as ministers they would continue to be subordinate to parliament. In general, the parliament's lawmaking activity decreased in 1993, as its agenda increasingly became dominated by efforts to increase the parliamentarian powers and reduce those of the president.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: The president's response was dramatic. On 20 March, Yeltsin addressed the nation directly on television, declaring that he had signed a decree on a "special regime" ("Об особом порядке управления до преодоления кризиса власти"), under which he would assume extraordinary executive power pending the results of a referendum on the timing of new legislative elections, on a new constitution, and on public confidence in the president and vice-president. Yeltsin also bitterly attacked the parliament, accusing the deputies of trying to restore the Soviet-era order.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: Soon after Yeltsin's televised address, Valery Zorkin (Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation), Yuri Voronin (first vice-chairman of the Supreme Soviet), Alexander Rutskoy and Valentin Stepankov (Prosecutor General) made an address, publicly condemning Yeltsin's declaration as unconstitutional. On 23 March, though not yet possessing the signed document, the Constitutional Court ruled that some of the measures proposed in Yeltsin's TV address were unconstitutional. However, the decree itself, that was only published a few days later, did not contain unconstitutional steps.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: The ninth congress, which opened on 26 March, began with an extraordinary session of the Congress of People's Deputies taking up discussions of emergency measures to defend the constitution, including impeachment of President Yeltsin. Yeltsin conceded that he had made mistakes and reached out to swing voters in parliament. Yeltsin narrowly survived an impeachment vote on March 28, votes for impeachment falling 72 short of the 689 votes needed for a 2/3 majority. The similar proposal to dismiss Ruslan Khasbulatov, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet was defeated by a wider margin (339 in favour of the motion), though 614 deputies had initially been in favour of including the re-election of the chairman in the agenda, a tell-tale sign of the weakness of Khasbulatov's own positions (517 votes for would have sufficed to dismiss the speaker).


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: By the time of the ninth Congress, the legislative branch was dominated by the joint communist-nationalist Russian Unity bloc, which included representatives of the CPRF and the Fatherland faction (communists, retired military personnel, and other deputies of a socialist orientation), Agrarian Union, and the faction "Russia" led by Sergey Baburin. These groups, together with more 'centrist' groups (e.g. 'Change' ("Смена")), left the opposing bloc of Yeltsin supporters ('Democratic Russia', 'Radical democrats') in a clear minority.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: The referendum would go ahead, but since the impeachment vote failed, the Congress of People's Deputies sought to set new terms for a popular referendum. The legislature's version of the referendum asked whether citizens had confidence in Yeltsin, approved of his reforms, and supported early presidential and legislative elections. The parliament voted that in order to win, the president would need to obtain 50 percent of the whole electorate, rather than 50 percent of those actually voting, to avoid an early presidential election.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: This time, the Constitutional Court supported Yeltsin and ruled that the president required only a simple majority on two issues: confidence in him, and economic and social policy; he would need the support of half the electorate in order to call new parliamentary and presidential elections.


title: 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

text: On 25 April, a majority of voters expressed confidence in the president and called for new legislative elections. Yeltsin termed the results a mandate for him to continue in power. Before the referendum, Yeltsin had promised to resign, if the electorate failed to express confidence in his policies. Although this permitted the president to declare that the population supported him, not the parliament, Yeltsin lacked a constitutional mechanism to implement his victory. As before, the president had to appeal to the people over the heads of the legislature.