From Subversion to Resistance: Lessons from Russia’s War in Ukraine
About this episode
The episode discusses the transformation of political unrest in Ukraine into an armed insurgency and the factors that influenced this change.
Today’s episode examines how Russian agents and local militants exploited ambiguity, weak state capacity, and fragmented local authority to transform unrest in the Donbas into an armed insurgency in 2014. At its core, it is a story about how a small group of armed actors can seize a city—and how local institutions, political legitimacy, and civil society can stop them. Dr. Celeste Wallander and Dr. Serhiy Kudelia are the guests. Summary Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, but the war began eight years earlier with the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of conflict in the Donbas. Wallander and Kudelia trace how Russian operatives converted genuine but diffuse political discontent into an armed insurgency, why militants seized some cities but failed in others, and how confusion over how to respond gave militants time to consolidate control. Their discussion traces Ukraine’s transformation from a state hampered in 2014 by fractured ties between Kyiv and local administrators and unprepared security forces to one capable of mounting a determined resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022—a transformation enabled by stronger military capacity…
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