Armed Forces of South Russia Southern Front Ukrainian Front The battle for Donbas was a military campaign of the Russian Civil War that lasted from January to May 1919, in which White forces repulsed attacks of the Red Army on the Don Host Oblast and occupied the Donbas region after heavy fighting.

After heavy fights, fought with variable luck, the Red Army took over key centers in this area (Yuzivka, Luhansk, Debaltseve, Mariupol) until the end of March, when it lost them to the Whites led by Vladimir May-Mayevsky.

On April 20, the front stretched along the Dmitrovsk-Horlivka line, and the Whites actually had an open road towards Kharkiv, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR.

The battle for Donbas ended at the beginning of June 1919 with a complete victory for the Whites, who continued their offensive towards Kharkiv, Katerynoslav, and then Crimea, Mykolaiv and Odesa.

In November and December 1918, part of Donbas was seized by Don Cossacks under the command of Pyotr Krasnov, after the withdrawal of the Imperial German Army and with the consent of the Ukrainian hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi.

[3] By the end of the month, Soviet troops, joined by local partisan units that had previously participated in the uprising against the Hetmanate, and armed workers' detachments from the cities, took over Poltava and Katerynoslav.

[9] On 28 March, troops of the 13th Army entered Yenakiieve, Mykitivka [ru], Makiivka and Horlivka, and on 3 April they seized Yuzivka, Yasynuvata and Starobesheve.

[13] However, on 6 and 7 April, White cavalry divisions under the command of Andrei Shkuro and Vladimir May-Mayevsky broke the defense of the Reds in the central part of Donbas and again took control of Yuzivka, Volnovakha, Mariupol, Makiivka, Yasynuvata, Yenakiieve and Horlivka.

Makhnovist guerrillas were welcomed as they entered the city and subsequently a committee was formed for the underground military-revolutionary Bolshevik Communist Party as well as a commissariat for the Soviet People's Militia.

According to Dybenko, during the battles, the regiments successfully repelled the combined Volunteer Army and French squadron, storming their fortifications and pushing them out into the Azov Sea.

Hundreds of Volunteer Army Cossacks reportedly surrendered with their weapons during the advance as the 1st Zadneprovsk Division's forces approached Taganrog.

At the end of March, the Congress of Councils of the newly created Donetsk Governorate chose an executive committee headed by Fyodor Sergeyev and developed a plan for the reconstruction of industry in Donbas.

[12] 60 of the tanks were provided by the Allies as part of the first batch of weapons, together with 200,000 firearms and 500 million pieces of ammunition, as well as 6,200 machine guns and 168 aircraft.

For the previous few months, while performing the duties of the chief of staff in the same operating union, he had been passing on information about the Red plans to their opponents.

[27] Another factor that contributed to the success of the Whites in Donbas was the fact that the Reds fought on many fronts at the same time - against the interveners in the north, against the Baltic states, in Ukraine, and in March–April also against Alexander Kolchak's Spring offensive in Siberia.

[28] At the beginning of June 1919, the battle of Donbas ended with a complete victory for the Whites, who continued their offensive into the Left-Bank and Sloboda Ukraine.

At the end of the month, the Volunteer Army smashed the Fortified Region, which was being hastily built by the Reds, and on 27 June they captured Kharkiv.

[29] After this defeat, Vacietis ordered the forces involved so far in the fighting on the left-bank to withdraw to a "safe zone", i.e. to those governorates in European Russia where Bolshevik power was still secure.