Donetsk in the context of "Kalmius"

Donetsk Oblast, also referred to as Donechchyna (Ukrainian: Донеччина, IPA: [doˈnɛtʃːɪnɐ]), is an oblast in eastern Ukraine. Before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was Ukraine's most populous province, with around 4.1 million residents. Its administrative center is Donetsk, though due to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, the regional administration was moved to Kramatorsk. Historically, the region has been an important part of the Donbas region. From its creation in 1938 until November 1961, it bore the name Stalino Oblast, in honour of Joseph Stalin. As part of the de-Stalinization process, it was renamed after the Donets river, the main artery of Eastern Ukraine. Its population is estimated at 4,100,280 (2021 est.).

The oblast is known for its urban sprawl of Donetsk–Makiivka and Horlivka–Yenakiieve and it is often associated with the coal mining industry.

The ongoing military occupation of Ukraine's Kherson Oblast (Russian: Херсонская область, romanized: Khersonskaya oblast) by Russian forces began on 24 February 2022, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine from Crimea. It was administrated under a Russian-controlled military-civilian administration until 30 September 2022, when the Russian government declared it had annexed the territory. Since then it administers it as an internationally unrecognized federal subject of Russia.

Russia captured the city of Kherson on 1 March 2022. Kherson was the only regional capital that Russia has managed to capture in the invasion, though the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk had been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Most of the rest of Kherson Oblast fell to Russian forces in the early months of the invasion.

The Donetsk People's Republic (DPR; Russian: Донецкая Народная Республика (ДНР), romanised: Donetskaya Narodnaya Respublika (DNR), IPA: [dɐˈnʲetskəjə nɐˈrodnəjə rʲɪˈspublʲɪkə]) is a republic of Russia with a capital in Donetsk, established on an illegally annexed part of Donetsk Oblast, Eastern Ukraine.

The DPR was created by Russian-backed paramilitaries in 2014, and it initially operated as a breakaway state until it was illegally annexed by Russia in 2022.

Makiivka (Ukrainian: Макіївка, IPA: [mɐˈkijiu̯kɐ] , Russian: Макеевка, romanized: Makeyevka), formerly Dmytriivsk (Ukrainian: Дмитріївськ) until 1931, is an industrial city in Donetsk Oblast, eastern Ukraine, located 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) east from Donetsk. The two cities are practically a conurbation. It has a population of 338,968 (2022 estimate). It hosts the administration of Makiivka urban hromada.

Makiivka is a metallurgical and coal-mining centre of the Donets Basin, with heavy industry and coking plants supporting the local steel and coal industries. The city was captured by pro-Russian separatists in 2014 at the start of the war in Donbas and is currently occupied by Russia.

Yenakiieve (Ukrainian: Єнакієве, pronounced [jeˈnɑkijewe] ; Russian: Енакиево, romanized: Yenakiyevo) is a city and the nominal administrative center of Yenakiieve urban hromada in the Horlivka Raion, Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine. The city stands on the Krynka River about 60 kilometres (37 mi) from the oblast's administrative center, Donetsk. Its population is approximately 76,673 (2022 estimate).

Yenakiieve is an important regional centre of coal mining, metallurgy, chemical production and manufacturing. The city's outdated industry has caused accidents like that of a gas explosion which occurred in June 2008 at one of Yenakiieve's coal mines. Yenakiieve was founded in 1898 when numerous workers' settlements around the Peter's Iron and Steel Works were united into a single settlement named after Fyodor Yenakiyev [ru]. Its first coal mines dated from 1883. The settlement was incorporated as a city in 1925. By 1958, the city and factories had expanded significantly and overtook the outlying villages of Simyukuo, Yevrah, and Tsiminyenny, all of which were resettled in their entirety when local livestock could not survive the expanding steel mills' runoff and pollution. One of the oldest metallurgical factories of Ukraine — the Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works operates in Yenakiieve.

From the end of February 2014, in the aftermath of the Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity, which resulted in the ousting of Russian-leaning Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, demonstrations by Russian-backed, pro-Russian, and anti-government groups (as well as pro-government demonstrations) took place in Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Odesa. The unrest, which was supported by the Russian military and intelligence services, belongs to the early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

During its first phase in February–March 2014, the Ukrainian territory of Crimea was invaded and subsequently annexed by Russia following an internationally unrecognized referendum, with the United Nations General Assembly voting in favor of Ukraine's territorial integrity. Concurrently, protests by anti-Maidan and pro-Russian groups took place across other parts of eastern and southern Ukraine. Local separatists, some directed and financed by the Russian security services, took advantage of the situation and occupied government buildings in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv oblasts in early March 2014. The Ukrainian government was able to quickly quell this unrest, and removed the separatists by 10 March.

The siege of Sloviansk was conducted by Ukraine between 12 April 2014 and 5 July 2014. It began when Sloviansk was seized by the fifty-strong unit of heavily armed Russian militants lead by Russian citizen Igor Girkin. Following three months of heavy fighting between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the separatist and Russian forces, the Ukrainian government retook the city as the pro-Russia rebels retreated to Donetsk. The engagement in Sloviansk marked the first military engagement of the War in Donbas.

On 12 April 2014, as unrest grew in eastern Ukraine following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, masked men in fatigues, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, took over the town and began to fortify it. They claimed to be local fighters of the Donetsk People's Republic, but were actually Russian Armed Forces 'volunteers' under the command of Russian GRU colonel Igor Girkin ('Strelkov'). In response, the Ukrainian Yatsenyuk Government created the first Anti-Terrorist Operations zone (ATO) and launched a series of counter-offensives against the insurgents, resulting in a standoff and violent skirmishes. Girkin later acknowledged that his men's seizure of Sloviansk sparked what would become the Donbas War.

Vasily Semyonovich Grossman (Russian: Васи́лий Семёнович Гро́ссман; 12 December [O.S. 29 November] 1905 – 14 September 1964) was a Soviet writer and journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, Grossman trained as a chemical engineer at Moscow State University, earning the nickname Vasya-khimik ("Vasya the Chemist") because of his diligence as a student. Upon graduation, he took a job in Stalino (now Donetsk) in the Donets Basin. In the 1930s he changed careers and began writing full-time, publishing a number of short stories and several novels.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Grossman was engaged as a war correspondent by the Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda; he wrote first-hand accounts of the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin. Grossman's eyewitness reports of a Nazi extermination camp, following the discovery of Treblinka, were among the earliest accounts of a Nazi death camp by a reporter.