Previous Subchapter → 2.1 The Reverse Card
This gamble initially seemed to be paying off well enough, by July 2022 all of the Luhansk region was under Russian control along with over half of Donetsk and Kharkiv, while the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions had been under majority Russian control since the early stages of the war; In these regions Russian passports were handed out, Russian sim cards replaced Ukrainian cards, the Russian currency (the Ruble) replaced the Ukrainian currency, (the Hryvnia), the blueprint of 2014’s annexation of Crimea was being followed, these regions would become like Russia, then become Russia.
But with the exception of Luhansk, none of the regions that were part of this plan were under total Russian or separatist rule. All of them still had sizable sections contested by Ukraine.
By this point the conflict almost began to resemble something like the First World War, a conflict marked by constant combat and death but with only small changes in territory for either side, through mid 2022 a war that had previously been shocking, bombastic and the top of news bulletins around the world turned static and forgotten, brutal, but static.