Oleg Tsarev, who heads the so-called Parliament of Novorossiya, says the group has ceased all activities, “insofar as it was not written into the peace plan signed by the Normandy Four” in Minsk earlier last February.
A spokesman for the Donetsk People’s Republic has also said efforts to develop a union between Donetsk and Luhansk have been suspended indefinitely, blaming Kiev for suppressing pro-Russian sentiment in the areas around and between Ukraine’s two separatist enclaves.
According to sources at the website Gazeta.ru, Novorossiya ceased to be a necessity in the eyes of the authorities after the Minsk II agreement. The opposite challenge emerged—integrating the Donetsk and Luhansk republics back into Ukraine, instead of expanding rebel-held territory. “As a result, Tsarev and everything connected to him has turned out not to be in demand.”
Tsarev has said Novorossiya includes several areas: both the rebel-held areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as regions still under Ukrainian control, like Kharkov and Dnipropetrovsk.
Russians, meanwhile, lack a strong common understanding of Novorossiya. According to a recent poll by the Levada Center, fewer than half of Russians say it is a “historically developed” region in southern Russia. Another 25 percent say Novorossiya is merely a “historical term that lacks any meaning today,” and 8 percent say it is a “new myth invented by Moscow.”