The military formations of the DPR and LPR were officially integrated into the Russian Armed Forces on December 31, 2022.he wrote in his subsequent brief overview of British military intelligence, posted on Twitter.
Russia declared the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic” (LPR) and “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR) as Russian territories in September 2022but since 2014, he has been secretly controlling these unrecognized territorial formations, creating the 1st Army Corps of the DPR, the 2nd Army Corps of the LPR and reinforcing them with Russian officers.
The status and identity of the DPR and LPR is likely to continue divisive within the Russian system. Even before the Russian invasion in February 2022, these territories exerted heavy pressure on Russian finances.
Now that the Kremlin is openly committed to supporting them, they are likely to cost Russia dearly diplomatically, politically and financially, and this will last much longer than the current phase of the conflict, British military intelligence concludes.
Recall that even after the separation from Ukraine, only the Russian ruble was used in the territories of the two unrecognized “republics”, and wages and prices there were lower than in most regions of Russia. Already in the spring of 2019 Putin has authorized the issuance of Russian passports to persons living in the LPR and DPR at their request, and by the end of the same year in the occupied territories of Ukraine more than 125 thousand Russian passports were issued. These documents are not recognized in the EU and in most western countries.
