From the late eighteenth century onward, the territories that now comprise Ukraine, particularly in the south and east, became central to the Russian Empire’s ambitions of territorial expansion, industrial dominance, and cultural assimilation. Under Catherine the Great, Russian imperial policy aggressively restructured the steppe frontier. The Cossack Hetmanate, a semi-autonomous polity with a unique military and political system, was dismantled, the Crimean Khanate, a Turkic vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, was absorbed, and newly seized lands were renamed with classical affectations meant to evoke a European veneer of civility and order. Settlements like Odesa and Kherson were transformed into ports of the empire. This was not a benign expansion but an aggressive settler-colonial project designed to overwrite the region’s indigenous political structures and Ukrainian cultural identity.
Colonists were recruited from across the empire, including Russians, Germans, Bulgarians, Greeks, Jews, and Serbs, often granted land incentives and privileges denied to local populations. This recalibration of the demographic and administrative landscape was central to Moscow’s colonial vision. The project was framed in the language of civilization, but its material logic was one of resource extraction and population control.
Ukrainians, despite being cast as peripheral subjects, demonstrated remarkable resilience. The Valuev Circular of 1863 and the Ems Ukaz of 1876 explicitly banned Ukrainian-language publications and education, branding the language as a mere dialect unfit for public or literary use. However, cultural repression did not quell the spirit of the Ukrainian people, and they continued to fight for their identity under the shadow of imperial control.
The Ukrainian peasantry, tied to the land and denied political power, was left voiceless within the machinery of the Russian state. In the eastern and southern territories newly incorporated into the empire, Ukrainian presence was marginalized both politically and symbolically. As industrialization accelerated in the second half of the nineteenth century, these lands became not only colonized but also transformed into engines for imperial economic power.
The Donbas and broader eastern regions of Ukraine were rich in coal, iron ore, and fertile land. These resources fueled Russia’s late imperial push toward heavy industrialization. Donetsk, initially founded by Welsh engineer John Hughes and previously known as Yuzovka, became a central hub for mining and metallurgy. Belgian and French capitalists established chemical and metallurgical plants in cities such as Lysychansk and Dnipropetrovsk. By 1910, Ukraine accounted for nearly 78 percent of the coal and 75 percent of the iron ore produced within the Russian Empire. The wealth extracted from these resources primarily flowed northward. Between 1893 and 1910, Ukraine generated an estimated 3.3 billion rubles for the imperial treasury, yet only 2.6 billion rubles were reinvested locally. This economic disparity signaled an exploitative relationship rooted in the logic of imperial industrial colonialism. Ukraine was cast as a resource hinterland, indispensable to Russia’s modernization but structurally excluded from its political core.
Industrial expansion brought rapid urbanization, but it also brought about a cultural erasure for Ukrainians. Cities swelled with migrants, primarily Russian-speaking workers and administrators, entrenching Russian linguistic and cultural dominance. Schools, administrative offices, and businesses operated in Russian, reinforcing assimilation as the price of social mobility. For Ukrainians, upward movement often required suppressing their native language and adopting imperial identity markers. The erasure was not only economic but cultural. The Ukrainian identity was rewritten to fit the imperial script, one in which Ukrainians were framed as “Little Russians,” a subordinate identity within the broader Slavic family. This cultural erasure should invoke a sense of empathy in the audience.
The Soviet Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the USSR reconfigured, but did not fundamentally alter, this relationship. The Donbas and surrounding regions remained critical industrial zones, now incorporated into centralized five-year plans under Stalin. Soviet modernization initiatives, such as the electrification of the countryside and the expansion of coal and steel production, solidified the economic centrality of eastern Ukraine. However, these developments came at a significant cost. The Holodomor famine of 1932–33, widely regarded by scholars as a genocide engineered through Stalinist grain requisitioning, devastated the Ukrainian countryside and further centralized authority in Moscow. Meanwhile, Soviet historiography continued to deny the validity of Ukrainian national consciousness. Cultural institutions were purged, intellectuals imprisoned or executed, and linguistic policies refocused on Russification, despite early Soviet 'korenizatsiya' policies that had initially encouraged national languages and cultures.
Throughout the Soviet era, Eastern Ukraine remained structurally dependent on Moscow. Gas pipelines, railway lines, and supply chains bound its economy tightly to the rest of the USSR. Military-industrial complexes in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhzhia became key arms production sites. This infrastructural integration masked deep political and economic inequalities. While the region was heavily industrialized, it was rarely autonomous. Its workers and engineers often had little control over production decisions, and profits were centrally managed. Moreover, environmental degradation, poor labor conditions, and suppression of regional governance deepened local frustrations.
The collapse of the USSR in 1991 dealt a severe blow to this fragile industrial edifice. Market liberalization, privatization, and political instability caused widespread economic dislocation. By the late 1990s, the coal mines and steel plants that had once symbolized Soviet might were either in decline or shuttered. Unemployment spiked. Labor strikes grew more frequent, infrastructure aged and crumbled. Oligarchs emerged from the wreckage, seizing control of key industries. Figures like Rinat Akhmetov amassed enormous wealth, particularly in the Donetsk region, thereby consolidating both political and economic power. These oligarchs frequently aligned with pro-Russian parties such as the Party of Regions, reinforcing ties to Moscow through trade, media influence, and political lobbying. This created a deeply uneven post-Soviet landscape where parts of eastern Ukraine remained economically and culturally oriented toward Russia, despite growing aspirations for integration with Europe in other parts of the country.
In 2014, these long-standing dynamics exploded into violent conflict. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for separatist movements in Donetsk and Luhansk relied on a deeply imperial narrative. Putin invoked the language of “Novorossiya,” reviving eighteenth-century colonial terms to claim these regions as historically Russian. Ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians were framed as victims of Ukrainian nationalism, in need of protection from Kyiv’s alleged encroachments. Economic grievances were weaponized. The closure of factories, decaying infrastructure, and perceived neglect by central authorities fueled separatist appeals. Armed groups seized control of industrial assets. Cities were turned into militarized zones. Railways, power plants, and steelworks became contested targets. This was not simply a civil conflict or a geopolitical dispute. It was the continuation of a centuries-long struggle over land, identity, and imperial control.
In the current phase of war that began in 2022, Russia’s invasion again centers on these industrial zones. Strikes on coking plants, rail hubs, and steel mills in cities like Mariupol and Avdiivka are not incidental. They reflect strategic efforts to weaken Ukraine’s economic sovereignty and assert control over regions deemed vital to imperial resurgence. The war is colonial not only in rhetoric but in material practice. Occupied territories have witnessed systematic attempts to erase Ukrainian identity through renaming streets, rewriting school curricula, replacing currency, and broadcasting Kremlin propaganda. Russian citizenship is imposed.
Ukrainian books are burned. Students are taught a version of history that denies Ukraine’s right to exist as a distinct political or cultural entity. Yet within this crisis, voices across Ukraine and abroad are advocating for a radically different future for the Donbas and Eastern Ukraine. A vision of reconstruction rooted in decolonization is taking shape. This involves dismantling the infrastructural and ideological legacies that tied the region to Russian domination. European-backed proposals emphasize green industrial transformation, environmental cleanup from decades of coal and chemical pollution, and decentralization to empower local governance. Rebuilding is not only about roads and factories but about schools, languages, media institutions, and cultural memory. It is about affirming Ukrainian identity not as a derivative of empire but as sovereign and plural.
Russia’s long arc of control over Eastern Ukraine was built on two interlocking foundations: settler colonialism and industrial extraction. From the Cossack frontier to Soviet steel mills, each phase deepened the region’s integration into an imperial order. Today’s war is the culmination of that history, and its resolution will depend on the ability not only to defeat invasion but also to reimagine Eastern Ukraine as a place defined not by exploitation but by autonomy, equity, and remembrance. Decolonization in this context is not a metaphor. It is a material, political, and cultural imperative necessary for peace, justice, and the restoration of a sovereign Ukrainian future.
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