The Donbas Conflict – Popular Uprising or Covert Invasion?

The Donbas Conflict – Popular Uprising or Covert Invasion? A Study of How War Begins Using Process Tracing Through Open Source Intelligence Analysis

Modern information technology is a blessing and a curse for the field of conflict studies. On the one hand, the Internet gives researchers unprecedented access to information from conflict zones. On the other hand, the large volume of this information makes it difficult to identify valuable data and to distinguish it from fabrications.

Open source intelligence analysis is a research technique that can help to identify, structure and verify online data in a transparent way. So far, it has mainly been used in journalism. My research proposal combines this technique with the social science methodology of process tracing to create a replicable framework for the academic analysis of war in murky information environments.

The war in Ukraine's Donbas region is a prime example of such an environment. The academic debate on the causes of this war is currently split between two contradicting narratives: home-grown civil war versus Russian invasion. Each narrative has different implications for policy making and further academic research, but neither is based on a transparent research methodology. I will apply my framework to this conflict and demonstrate its usefulness by establishing which one of the narratives is more in line with the available evidence.