Aggressors may covertly initiate and wage combat operations on the territory of the target region through the hands of puppet armed formations, radical groups, or mercenaries. This technique is used for the forcible seizure of governance without a formal declaration of war. Sponsoring, arming, and coordinating illegal detachments allows the colonizer to artificially create the illusion of an internal civil conflict, destroy the state institutions of the local population, and establish military control over the territory while formally denying its direct involvement.
Seeking to weaken the Hetmanate from within and prevent it from breaking vassalage, Moscow artificially fomented civil war, supporting and arming the internal opposition against the lawful hetman: "The proclamation of I. Vyhovsky as hetman was received negatively by the representatives of the forces opposed to him," led by Poltava colonel Pushkar and kish otaman Barabash[1]. Their revolt opened the period of the bloody Ruin.
The seizure of Sloviansk by an armed group that had crossed the border, and the formation of the separatist "DNR"/"LNR": the detachment's commander openly admitted that "in practice it was our detachment that set in motion the flywheel of the war that is still going on," and that "it was I, after all, who pulled the trigger of the war"[2]. In parallel, "groups of armed men unlawfully carried out a well-organized and coordinated seizure of public buildings and police and security service offices"[3]. The "republic's" leadership was from the outset dispatched from Moscow: "Alexander Boroday - the first prime minister of the DNR, who in 2014 handed over his powers to Alexander Zakharchenko," a Muscovite raised "in an intelligentsia Moscow family"[4].