Thread by @bmilakovsky

In @opendemocracyru I share how I've been trying to grog what's happening in #Ukraine #Donbas #Donbass under #Russia's relentless assault and whether a path was possible to a different outcome. I cite work of @scrawnya and @SporrerWolfgang here. THREAD opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine…

My starting point is this: the Donbas is ravaged beyond repair. In the areas under the control of Kyiv before Feb '22, only Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and a smattering of small mining and factory towns remain more/less intact, and they are under brutal rocket attack already. 2/

In the parts of Luhansk Oblast that Kyiv controlled every town larger than 14,000 people has been wrecked and occupied. The rest are simply occupied. Here's maternity ward in #Serverodonetsk where my daughter was born, amidst ruins of this 120,000 strong city. 3/

I don't mean there's no future in the Donbas. UA + its western partners *might pull off a revival like that of Warsaw after WWII. But its already too far to talk about repairing/rebuilding. It will be closer to re-establishing, and I don't yet understand w/ what economic base. 4/

The areas Moscow has controlled since 2014 have taken much less of a physical beating, but anyone following daily reports will know the civilian death toll in Donetsk has also been grisly. Probably much worse is the mass mobilization of region's me and their cannon foddering. 5/

Situation is nightmarishly bad. Were there chances to avoid it? Many will say "sure, Russia could have just not invaded." And, yeah, of course. But with power there concentrated in hands of a pathological, messiah-complexed sociopath, we don't have a lot of direct leverage. 6/

We did have other ways we could relate and respond to Putin's growing revanchist threat. And let's be honest: we could have tried in very different ways. Either full bore efense of UA's sovereignty with western arms much earlier, or gone the way of Lousy Peacemaking. 7/

What we did was split the difference with tough rhetoric and narrow negotiating horizons, w/out providing force of arms needed to defer/repel Russia if it lost patience with deadlock and lashed out. It was most comfortable but not smartest option in near-impossible situation. 8/

But Ukraine's extraordinary resilience and Russia's brain-rotted tactical idiocy allowed us to avoid reaping the fruits of this terrible "neither fish nor fowl" policy. We finally picked (the only) option and began large-scale arming of Ukraine. Too late, though, for Donbas. 9/

In assessing the what-ifs, though, we should ask the hard questions. For those who wanted many more arms, much earlier, please admit that prob would have triggered much earlier RU invasion. At what point was UA military ready to effectively use arms to repel such an assault? 10/

Was it ready in 2014, during the first Donbas war? I'd like to know what military experts think. My feeling is not really, and we may have seen RU escalating and punching much deeper into UA back then. 11/

But I'd ask peacemongers (I was def in this category 2014-2022) this: if Putin's alternative to deadlock in Minsk negotiations was total war and baldfaced RU chauvinist revanche, what was he expecting to accomplish thru Minsk? Let's not treat it like the obvious easy out. 12/

In the coming days I'll expand on some other aspects of this terrible topic. END