What did Surkov's dismissal signal for Donbas policy?
A retrospective on 19 February 2020 and the reports of the preceding day: a Kremlin personnel change, fighting near Donbas villages and a new US sanction.
What was happening around Ukraine on 19 February 2020? The reports from the day before pointed to a mix of military pressure on the front line and a notable personnel change in Moscow.
On 18 February 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an order dismissing senior adviser Vladislav Surkov. Surkov had been in charge of the Kremlin's policy on the Ukrainian crisis and its relations with the separatist "people's republics" in the Donbas. As reported at the time, no further detail accompanied the order, and what it meant for that policy was not spelled out.
The same morning, occupation forces carried out a large-scale attack on positions of the Joint Forces near Novotoshkivske, Orikhove, Krymske and Khutir Vilnyi. Ukrainian forces took casualties.
Separately, on 18 February 2020 the US State Department added the Russian oil company Rosneft Trading S.A. to its financial blacklist. The listing was imposed for helping to facilitate the sale of Venezuelan oil, in the context of international sanctions during the Venezuelan crisis.
Taken together, these events show a day on which the front line stayed active while the Kremlin changed the person who had handled its Donbas file. Looking back, the dismissal and the attack are best read as simultaneous developments, not as connected ones, since nothing in the reports linked them.
