Thread by @kamilkazani

Fair enough. While Crimea had separatist attitiudes, Donbass did not. In fact, it was a major power center of pre-2014 Ukraine. While Russia is picturing Ukrainian political system as dominance of Galicia, picturing it as Donetsk & Dnipro dominance may be more factually accurate

https://twitter.com/bozhablagodat/status/1557034445793886208

I would argue that the actual political influence of the West Ukrainian interest groups on Kyiv politics had been exaggerated. While the influence of interest groups from the large industrial cities of the South East: especially Dnipro and Donetsk had been vastly underrated

In 2014 Donetsk interest group lost massively. They chose to welcome the Russian involvement. A dog was losing in a fight and called for the wolves to help. As a result, the Donetsk group not only lost everything but the Donbass itself turned into the country of depopulated ruins

Azovstal where the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol took their last stand was the major asset of Rinat Akhmetov. The richest businessman of Donetsk, who was the force standing behind Yanukovich and who was a big loser of the 2014 Maidan

There is a strong reason to believe that the "Owner of Donetsk" as he was styled helped the Donetsk People's Republic on its very early stages, securing the smooth switching of allegiance by the local police and state security. But then Russia took direct control, kicking him out

When discussing the "separatism" of Donetsk we miss the elephant in the room: the massive switching of colours by the local state security and the cops. Which was massive. It was probably orchestrated by the businessmen of the Donetsk interest group who lost during the Maidan

Consider the following. All of the "heroes of the Russian spring", separatist commanders in Donetsk were later cleansed by Russia. Kremlin killed every single of them, even those who left to Russia. Yes, they were kinda useful but too chaotic and unruly from Kremlin's perspective

Only two early DPR commanders are still alive: Strelkov and Khodakovsky. Two things in common between them:

1. They're both alive. Russians did not kill them like the rest
2. They're both from the state security. Strelkov from the FSB, Khodakovsky from the SBU

Yeah, the only Donbass separatist commander of Ukrainian origin the Russians did not kill used to be a career officer of the Ukrainian state security. From the FSB perspective it makes him socially adjacent. He will be spared and allowed to command, he is kinda one of us

The elephant in the room is that the institutional gap between Russian and Ukraine before 2014 was not great. It was basically the same military industrial complex. Dnipro played the key role in Russian missiles production, Zporizhya in engines, Mykolaiv in shipbuilding

Russian army and state security worked very closely with the Ukrainian ones and in a sense comprised one organism. It was in 2014 when these ties were finally broken. Some would argue that the USSR fall in 1991. I would argue that the Soviet Union died for real only in 2014

The end