Since 2014, Russia has provided extensive, wide-ranging support to Eastern Ukrainian separatists. As the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) notes, Moscow uses “[private military company] Wagner, nationalist or extreme leftist groups, and public and online recruiting campaigns” to recruit manpower for the separtists, while providing the separatists with funding, weapons and military equipment, training, and advisors. Russian troops have even fought on the frontlines in support of the separatists. As ISW writes, “The Kremlin is the guarantor of the survival of its separatist proxies… [who] could not continue to fight without the support of the Kremlin.”