This paper starts with a comparison between the Russian policies toward the occupied Donbas regions and the Russian administration of the colonized Ukrainian lands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Then, we describe how these policies affected the population of the Donetsk and Luhansk Popular Republics and the position of the indigenous population in the newly established colonial framework. Finally, we describe how the  Russian government uses the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk Popular Republics as sources of ideological resources to maintain the dictatorial regime of Vladimir Putin.