RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR: THE WAY HOW THE 'GRAY WAR' IN THE EAST OF UKRAINE TURNED INTO A LARGE-SCALE 'BLACK' ONE

After Putin came to power, the hybrid war against Ukraine acquired a pronounced existential character, as the Ukrainian people demonstrated independence in making political decisions, in spite of all forces and means imposed by the totalitarian Russian "brotherhood". In 2014, as a result of the occupation of Crimea and certain territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, hybrid aggression against Ukraine was usually considered in the concepts of the gray zone conflict. Taking into account the conventional nature of the actions of the russian authorities in the East of Ukraine, the authors of the article operate with the concept of "gray war" and the artificially created real and conditional "gray zone" in the Donbass as an instrument of a hybrid war against the whole Ukraine. Using the factor of quarantine measures in connection with the Covid-19 Pandemic, the temporarily occupied territories were purposefully isolated (physically and mentally) from free Ukraine, which made it possible to prepare the “gray zone” with impunity as a springboard and pretext for a large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The practices, methods and tools that the russian occupation authorities use in the Ukrainian territories occupied after February 24: forced passportization, russification, preparations for holding "referendums" were tested in the "gray zone", which actualizes the study of the processes that took place there in general, and just before the outbreak of a large-scale war, in order to learn lessons and counter them.