[10] During the war in Donbas that began in 2014, the Ukrainian authorities lost control over parts of Popasna Raion to the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), an unrecognized, Russia-backed breakaway state.

[11][12] On 7 October 2014, to facilitate the governance of partially-occupied Luhansk Oblast, the Verkhovna Rada made some changes in its administrative divisions, so that the localities in the government-controlled areas were grouped into districts.

[13] The part of Popasna Raion under control of the Luhansk People's Republic were transferred to other administrative units as well.

[citation needed] The Ukrainian raion was abolished for a third and final time on 18 July 2020 as part of the decentralizing administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Luhansk Oblast to eight, of which only four were controlled by the government.

In March 2023, legal documents of the Luhansk People's Republic - which by that point had been explicitly annexed by Russia - stopped using Popasna Raion as an administrative unit, due to the extreme level of destruction of the city and its surroundings.