(C) OpenDemocracy
This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Could the West have saved Ukraine’s Donbas? [1]
[]
Date: 2023-04
For seven years after Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, I lived in the city of Severodonetsk in the eastern Donbas region. I started a family there.
Russia’s war has since claimed the apartment we lived in for the first five years; the new home we barely had time to enjoy on a street lined with horse chestnut trees; the resort beneath the pines at nearby Kreminna where we were married; the maternity ward where our daughter was born; my office; my wife’s alma mater; our favourite Georgian café, run by refugees from North Ossetia; the big supermarket we used for the weekend shop and both corner shops we ran to for last-minute ingredients.
Practically everything we knew in the areas of Donbas that were controlled by the Ukrainian government before February 2022 is now a shell-pocked ruin.
The news from eastern Ukraine can be overwhelming in its scale and tragedy. Previously obscure cities and villages soar to prominence at the moment of their destruction. Some linger in the headlines for months as Ukrainian forces doggedly defend the ruins.
Get the free oDR newsletter A weekly summary of our latest stories about the post-Soviet world. Sign up now
Despite this, it is easy to lose the full scope of the horror, and to miss the thoroughness with which Donbas is being destroyed. In the words of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyi: “We understand that after this war nothing will be left alive there.”
Was some other destination possible for this traumatised place? If so, where were the off-ramps? Where would they have taken us? These are some of the questions I have been reflecting on over the past year.
Destruction and death everywhere
In 2014, Donbas was split in two when the Russian military and local Russian-backed separatist groups seized control of its most urbanised areas. In blandly neutral humanitarian speak, the two areas became known as ‘government-controlled areas’ (GCA) and ‘non-government-controlled areas’ (NGCA), though the latter were better known as the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk ‘people’s republics’ or simply: the occupied territories.
Both GCA and NGCA communities suffered in the hot war of 2014-15 and the low-level artillery exchange of the following seven years, though the majority of the 3,400 civilian deaths that occurred were in the NGCA.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-donbas-mariupol-destruction-minsk-peacemaking/
Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/
