Ukrainian Foreign minister Dmitry Kuleba said on Wednesday that Kiev had submitted an initiative to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to discuss on February 17 the Russian State Duma's appeal for Putin to recognize the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), saying the resolution "undermines Minsk agreements and the peace process."
The resolution received extremely wide support in the Russian State Duma, but Putin so far seems cool to the idea, telling German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that while he would do everything he could to solve the problems of the Donets River basin, the potential for success in the Minsk agreements had not yet been exhausted.
Putin also called the Ukrainian siege of the Donbass a "genocide" and put the blame on its irresolution firmly on the shoulders of Kiev, accusing it of refusing to implement the Minsk peace agreements reached with Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
A historically heavily industrial region thanks to its rich coal fields, the Donbas is home to a sizeable minority of ethnic Russians, and a majority of its population speaks primarily Russian. During the events of February 2014, when a US-backed coup in Kiev brought to power a Ukrainian nationalist government, the Donbass joined several other Russophone regions of Ukraine in protesting the coup government.
After the new government attempted to reduce the status of Russian as one of Ukraine's national languages, independent people's republics were declared in Luhansk and Donetsk in May 2014, which have defended their autonomy from Kiev in a war that has claimed at least 13,000 lives.
The same upheaval also led to the declaration of independence by Russophone Crimea, which then voted in a referendum to join the Russian Federation. Kiev has accused Moscow of masterminding the Donbass and Crimean rebellions and secretly supporting the DPR and LPR - accusations Moscow has denied, saying it does not meddle in Ukrainian affairs. Moscow has never recognized either the DPR or LPR declarations of independence.