Why Ukraine's failing Donbass
region is becoming a big headache for Russia.
The Russian-occupied Donbass enclave in eastern
Ukraine is on the verge of economic and social collapse. That grave fact casts
the Russo-Ukrainian war in a different light. Normally, wars are fought over
prize territory: winners gain it, losers lose it.
In this case, the implosion of the Donbass means that
whoever controls the enclave is, in fact, the loser. As the man who owns
the enclave and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future, Vladimir Putin
is thus the loser. And both Russia and Ukraine know it.
According to
United Nations data, of the 5 million
people who formerly populated the enclave, nearly 2 million have left since
March 2014. Since many of these refugees are educated, middle-class
professionals who are unlikely ever to return to a war zone, the enclave has
suffered an irreparable loss of its intellectual and human capital.
Of the 3 million
who are left, about 2 million are children and pensioners — leaving 1 million
working-age adults to support them, service the crumbling economy, and do the
fighting. According to the National Bank of Ukraine, GDP in the Donbass has collapsed, with industrial
production falling by over a third in 2014, and construction by over a half.
Many bridges and rail tracks remain destroyed. Only one third of residents
receive a steady wage. Large swathes of the territory suffer from gas, water,
and electricity shortages. And Kiev stopped paying pensions to enclave
residents in late 2014. Unsurprisingly, the decline of the Donbass has
continued apace in 2015.
Although refugee
streams appear to have abated — those most able to flee have already left —
economic decline and flight will continue as long as the war does. In time, the
enclave’s population will consist of senior citizens barely surviving off their
private plots, children forced to fend for themselves on the street, overworked
women, and desperate men who opt either for alcoholism or for the material
compensations of fighting — and dying — within the separatist ranks. (In the
photo, a resident of the Donbass village of Nikishino talks to neighbors
outside her destroyed home.)
The longer the
fighting continues, the less will the Donbass be able to sustain itself and its
war-fighting capacity and the less will the separatists be able to create a
functioning political entity. Worse for Putin, the enclave’s only source of
economic sustenance is the country that has done most to destroy it — Russia.
Putin would prefer that Kiev assume the cost of feeding the region and paying
to rebuild it (infrastructural damage is estimated by the Ukrainian government
to be about 5 billion hryvnia, or a bit over $2
billion). But Ukraine will never do that as long as the enclave is controlled by
the separatists, who insist they will never abandon their aspirations to
independence.
Given the
enclave’s economic decline and dearth of able-bodied men, it’s no wonder that
the separatist armies rely so heavily on volunteers from Russia and on Russian
regular forces. We have no way of estimating how many physically fit
working-age adult Donbass males still support Putin and his proxies, but there
is anecdotal evidence to suggest that some of them are having second thoughts
about the prospects of a cause that has depopulated their region and devastated
their economy. Some must also sense that their losses have been high, both in
absolute and relative terms. If, as there is good reason to believe, separatist
losses exceed those
suffered by Ukraine’s armed forces (about 3,000 dead: 1,750 confirmed and an
estimated 1,250 missing in action and presumed dead), some separatists must be
wondering about the enclave’s ability to continue fighting.
The problems with
relying on Russian volunteers and Russian regulars are obvious. They put the
lie to the separatist claim that they are fighting a civil war against the
“fascist junta” in Kiev. They are expensive — and the Kremlin has to pick up
the bill. They do nothing to boost the local economy. And they run the risk of
alienating what’s left of the local population, which may have felt some
solidarity with its own “boys,” but which is less likely to identify with
Russian adventurers from Tomsk.
The current stand-off is thus unsustainable for the
separatists and their patron, Putin. The longer they hold on to a
territory that Kiev cannot liberate, the higher the economic price and the
greater the risks of the occupation. There is, however, no easy way out of this
jam for Russia. Renewing the fighting would kill more Ukrainians and harm
Ukraine’s reform plans, but, like having the self-styled Donetsk and Luhansk
People’s Republics declare independence, it would do nothing to resolve the
Kremlin’s difficulties in the enclave. Indeed, expanding the size of the
enclave would only compound Putin’s problems, as expansion would inevitably
destroy more territory and promote greater population flight.
If Russia could
inflict a decisive defeat on Ukraine, it could force it to retake the
Donbass on Russia’s terms. But this would require a massive attack which would
likely intensify Western sanctions, compel the Obama administration to
provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, encounter determined Ukrainian resistance,
and end up embroiling Russia in a bloody long-term war.
The logical
solution to this conundrum would be to declare victory over the “fascist junta”
in Kiev, pull out Russian forces, and dump the enclave on Ukraine, which,
having insisted that the Donbass is Ukrainian, would have no choice but to try
to cope with the mess. For that to happen, however, Putin would have to abandon
all the ideological grandstanding he’s employed over the last few years.
Besides jeopardizing his legitimacy and power, such a conciliatory move would
not come easily to the Kremlin’s self-styled macho man.
In contrast, the
current stand-off is the best of all possible worlds for Kiev. Ukraine can
benefit from the emotional appeal of insisting that it will never abandon the
Donbass, while actually doing nothing to liberate it. Time is on Ukraine’s
side, precisely because winning this “hybrid” war means losing territory. All
Ukraine needs do is keep the separatists boxed in. Sooner or later, a rational
or semi-rational Putin disinclined to start World War III over a piece of
crummy real estate will have to accept “frozen conflict” status or pull another
Crimea and annex the territory. Either way, Russia will be stuck with a
no-future region that will be a drag on its economy for decades to come.
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