본문 내용으로 건더뛰기

KDI 경제교육·정보센터

ENG
  • 경제배움
  • Economic

    Information

    and Education

    Center

국제무역
Diversionary Escalation: Theory and Evidence from Eastern Ukraine
CEPR
2026.02.12
When leaders face threats to their authority, escalating foreign conflict can help divert public attention away from domestic grievances. We develop a formal microfoundation for diversionary escalation rooted in a theory of regime change. Although the idea of diversionary escalation is classic, systematic quantitative evidence has been challenging to obtain. Using a new data set of 1.8 million conflict incidents, obtained from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe‘s (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine in 2015--2022, we find evidence that the Russian government strategically employed proxy-initiated separatist violence in Eastern Ukraine to divert attention from domestic unrest and opposition-led protest. We also find a positive link between opposition protest and inflammatory anti-Ukrainian coverage in the Russian media, complementary to battlefield escalation.