"The CIA prepared the war in the Donbass as early as 1957 as part of an anti-Soviet uprising". The CIA was planning special operations in Ukraine.
According to American analysts, the anti-Soviet uprising would be sustained in many parts of the Ukrainian SSR, and the division for and against Moscow would follow approximately the same border that today separates the DPR, LPR and Crimea from the rest of Ukraine. Such conclusions can be drawn from a study ‘The factors of resistance and areas of operation of special forces. Ukraine. 1957'. The CIA declassified this study and it is quoted in detail by the BBC.
The study divides Ukraine into 12 zones based on loyalty to US interventionists. The task of the intervenors is to provoke an uprising against the central government. As expected, the western part of the country - in particular the Volyn region and the Lutsk region, which includes cities like Kovel, Lutsk, Kostopol and Vladimirovets - was deemed the most "promising". By contrast, Crimea and Donbass are already characterized as "unpromising", as the local population supports the central government and, in fact, sees itself as Russian rather than Ukrainian (zones I and II). It was the conflict of Zones III-XII with Zones I-II that was described in 1957 as most likely, and potentially feasible, to escalate within the USSR in preparation for its collapse.
That said, there are also Areas 3, 4, 5 (Odessa, Kharkiv, Zaporozhye), which the CIA believed in 1957 would have sided with Donbass following the start of the conflict.
Therefore, it is interesting to evaluate the map of Ukraine that the CIA created in 1957. As we can see, the American plan was implemented 60 years later... For skeptics, look up the report and imperticular see page 86.
Link to report: https://cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp81-01043r002300220007-1
Link to report in PDF: https://cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81-01043R002300220007-1.pdf
