This has been churning in my head for the past month and I'm trying to work some of it out here. A lot of mea culpas and remaining ?s here. 2/
Today's wholesale annihilation of these same cities by Russia makes 2015 damages seem minor. But it was whole neighborhoods of windowless apartment buildings with the random gaping holes of direct artillery hits. Little miner's homes reduced to heaps of brick and ceiling beams.4/
I had never seen it before and random, unpredictable horror of artillery warfare affected me deeply. So did testimonies of civilians in these gov't-controlled towns and the displaced persons from Russia-controlled "Peoples Republics" where destruction was more concentrated. 5/
The overwhelming impression was trauma. From my first days in the Donbas I understood the ideological diversity of the region and pro-Ukrainian locals became my personal, profession network for next 6 years. But was impossible to ignore widespread alienation of those times. 6/
This was Russia's war. Destruction before my eyes showed what that meant for gov't-controlled areas. But combo of ideological ferment after Maidan revolution (widely opposed in region) and concentrated damage, suffering during military ops against RU/separatist forces...7/
...brought on the alienation. I did meet people who wanted to fight on to Ukraine's victory, but mostly I heard full-throated call to somehow end the fighting. I kept hearing the question "Why can't they make some kind of a deal?" 8/
The memory of Russia's two most direct military interventions (practically w/out thin veneer of "separatist fighters") at Ilovaisk and Debaltseve was fresh. Moscow made clear it would shatter any Ukrainian offensive aimed at defeating its "Republics". 9/
And there was newly-created Minsk negotiation platform, which seemed to offer a path to some kind of a Lousy Peace that would allow Ukraine to avoid the next Big War in the Donbas. This all created the framework of "war avoidance" that I operated in mentally in coming years. 10/
In practice this made me very nervous about large-scale arms transfers to UA. In June, 2015 I wrote in National Interest that transfers being discussed in Congress could trigger greater escalation from Putin until he smashed enough to make foundations of his next peace. 11/
To this day I believe that a return to full-scale warfare in 2015 with all that meant for the people of the Donbas on both sides of line would have been catastrophic. 12/
But with time I became dogmatic in my opposition. In 2017 I was against modest and narrow transfer of Javelins. At the time Ukrainian army was trying to improve its position in key frontline hotspots (dubbed "creeping offensive" in UA media)...13/
...and a popular topic among commentators was "could Ukraine emulate Croatia's Operation Storm and retake occupied territories by force?" Civilian suffering was on the uptick as frontline clashes intensified. "Don't risk escalation" was my mantra. 14/
But in fact creeping offensive was limited tactical operation to reduce UA casualties at exposed positions. "Operation Storm" was mere media bubble. The Javelins went into storage in western Ukraine, and perhaps their presence deterred Russian tank activity at the front. 15/
After this I stopped opposing modest arms transfers, but at same time didn't become a vocal proponent of increasing them. Any ambitious program to arm Ukraine would likely have incited invasion of similar intensity to this one. Like many I still hoped aversion was possible. 16/
And that's what is so awful. The Big War came anyway when the rancid ideological ferment in Putin's head overflowed, and he just slapped together the justification he needed out of mostly symbolic NATO/UA joint exercises and made-up Ukrainian outrages. 17/
(Digression: this makes it so hard for me to accept Biden's "neither fish nor fowl" policy towards #Ukraine. Knowing with high certainty that Putin was set on this war the US neither went full peacemaker, trying to seriously bargain away UA NATO candidacy for de-escalation... 18/
...nor got sufficiently serious about arming UA to improve its odds in the oncoming fight. I can't understand a policy that does NEITHER of these things.) 19/
Russia is both hypersensitive to perceived provocation and hyper-responsive to perceived license. If there is a golden mean of enough restraint to avoid triggering the former and enough assertiveness to avoid the latter, neither I nor anyone else seems to know where it's at. 20/
But as a compulsive War Avoider I respect that many people were saying earlier that Russia was perceiving western restraint on arming Ukraine as license and acting accordingly. A blind spot for some of us. 21/
We also underestimated how Russian anti-Ukrainian ideology, always kept on a simmer by toxic state media, had boiled down into the condensed Z narcotic that makes the country's elites sacrifice material interest and strategic advantage on behalf of their hopped up fantasies. 22/
On February 23rd Putin was in superb position strategically. He had thrown away useless Minsk and now was using threat to take all of the Donbas by force to achieve the same *and more* aims. He could dole out careful escalation and negotiations in turns to keep up pressure...23/
...while taking advantage of obvious discrepancies in resolve, stiffness of spine among western countries. I had sick feeling this would work so well we would all start missing Minsk...and then he just blew it up on behalf of his murderous and historically illiterate crusade. 24/
I knew about power of this ideology, I lived in Russia for the first year of the Donbas war. It's powerful kool-aid! But we didn't realize extent Putin was no longer "weaponizing" ideology but actually letting it override all other faculties for making political decisions. 25/
To the extent he could choose a war strategy so uninformed by ANY of modern Ukraine's realities and so transparently harmful to his country's interests. 26/
So the ?s that still remain for me are 1) "was there ever really a Lousy Peace available to Ukraine, or was this massive violence lurking too close to the surface and eventually just had to come out?" Planning another thread on this...27/
2) "Was there a way to effectively arm Ukraine that did not just bring on this same horrific war earlier, and if the war was inevitable, could we have armed Ukraine fast enough to effect outcomes early on?" 28/
These are the questions on endless loop in my mind. END
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