Authors

Serhiy Kudelia⁴; Marnie Howlett²; Kimitaka Matsuzato³; Jakob Hauter¹;  ¹ University College London, UK;  ² Oxford University, UK;  ³ University of Tokyo, Japan;  ⁴ Baylor University, United States

Discussion

The proposed panel will discuss the main themes and arguments of the book by Serhiy Kudelia "Seize the City, Undo the State: The Inception of Russia's War on Ukraine" (Oxford University Press, 2025). 
They include:
1) Goals and tactics behind Russia's interventions in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine;
2) The role of local activists and self-defense units in organizing the secessionist insurgency in Donbas;
3) The impact of municipal authorities in individual towns of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in implementing the secessionist agenda;
4) The key drivers behind the spread of separatist coercive coercive control across Donbas;
5) Resistance to separatist takeover in some towns of Donbas and the reasons for their varied success in the region;
6) The failure of pro-Russian mobilization in Kharkiv and Odesa to turn into a separatist challenge to the Ukrainian state. 
7) Lessons from 2014 insurgency in Donbas for understanding Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. 

The proposed panel will also discuss the book's contribution to the debate about the primacy of external versus internal factors in the onset of the armed conflict in Donbas.  

The panel participants are Serhiy Kudelia (Baylor University), Kimitaka Matsuzato (University of Tokyo), Marnie Howlett (University of Oxford), Jakob Hauter (University College London).