The war in Donbas, also called the Donbas war, was a phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The war began in April 2014, when Russian-backed fighters began an uprising against the Ukrainian government, seized territory and declared independent states. Ukraine's military launched an operation against them, but failed to fully retake the territory. Covertly, Russia's military were directly involved, and the separatists were largely under Russian control. This phase ended when the war was subsumed by the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.