So much for Moscow’s claim that the events in Donbas are a “civil war” in Ukraine to which Russia is not a party. On October 10 the Russian state news agency TASS reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aide Vladislav Surkov had met, in Moscow, with the current leader of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk people’s republic” (DPR) and “promised an increase in salaries in the DPR.”