In the context of the need to identify the entity or entities responsible for personal and property rights of individuals and legal entities, as well as for the violation of these rights in certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, over which the Government of Ukraine temporarily lost control, the status of this territory should be precisely determined in accordance with international law. This problem can be considered as the result of the classification of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine as international or non-international (although there are intermediate determinations). But it can be considered as separate issue in the context of the so-called the law of occupation and significant transformation of the latter after the Second World War. In this sense,the problem can acquire not only practical but also scientific significance. It is clear that this article can only be about formulation of the problem, not solving.

The authors suggest that because of the long-term development of the classical norms of international humanitarian law, the law of occupation was generalized. It can be confirmed that there is a single legal regime of illegal control of one state’s territory by another state. Forms of such control are occupation, which provides for the official recognition by the state of its control over another state territory (part of the territory), and not clearly demarcated effective, universal, general, actual control. According to the authors, the latter can be considered the only form of effective control, which involves unannounced actions and informal means of its implementation, attempts to present controlled military structures and military-administrative institutions as independent non-state actors in international relations.

The determination of status of ORDLO in international law is ambiguous. The Minsk agreements of 2014 avoided defining the other side of the conflict (the first was Ukraine), and in 2015 the armed forces of the ORDLO were named the second side. It is not specified to whom they are subordinated and who can be considered representatives of ORDLO. PACE resolutions recognize the dual fact of Russia’s temporary occupation of ORDLO and its effective control over illegal armed groups in the territory. It is important that the PACE points out that the IV Geneva Convention of 1949 applies to the armed conflict in Ukraine and in particular to the situation in the ORDLO. At the same time, full recognition of the existence of an international armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia on the territory of ORDLO, as well as Russia’s illegal control over ORDLO (in the form of occupation, effective or other control) should be expected in several cases before the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court,European Court of Human Rights.