The cold phase of the conflict manifests itself in killings of civil activists and journalists.

Ukrainian businessman Ihor Kolomoisky says that the Russia-orchestrated "civil war" in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, will immediately end after the Russian Federation stops supporting fighters.

"Maidan was no good, a revolution is always no good," he told Bihus.Info, a project of investigative journalism. "Because [it is] eventually minus 13 million people, minus Crimea, minus Donbas. [Ex-president of Ukraine Viktor] Yanukovych, Russia and the revolution are of course [to blame]. Mutual hatred, internal civil conflict, internal civil war. Thank God it has not spread to the whole territory, but it has a hot phase in Donbas and a cold phase in the rest of the country."

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According to Kolomoisky, in particular, the cold phase manifests itself in killings of civil society activists and journalists.

"Civil war [is when] Ukrainians [are] against Ukrainians, Russia supports one side of the Ukrainians. If it hadn't, it would have ended a long time ago. The Ukrainians would have made it up with each other. [But] it was Russia that instigated and masterminded the conflict. [This is the case] on the one hand, but on the other hand, not everything was all right either," he added.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Ivan Aparshyn, an adviser to Ukraine's President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky on security and defense issues, in turn, says that the return of Ukrainian territories by military means is "already a lost chance of 2014."