Who Wants To Die In Eastern Ukraine?

A boy sits on an armored personnel carrier as he poses for a picture during a parade in Luhansk, eastern Ukraine, September 14, 2014. REUTERS/Marko Djurica

Alexander J. Motyl, World Affairs: Ukraine's Orange Blues. Dying for the Donbas?

Just about every day, soldiers die. Sometimes, it’s as many as three or four. Sometimes, it’s two or three. Usually, it’s only one.

Only one young life snuffed out—for what?

For the Russian-occupied Donbas enclave. That is to say, for nothing.

I can understand, intellectually, at least, dying for your family or friends, for your country or city or community, for democracy or peace or your nation.

But dying for a piece of crummy land populated by 3 million inhabitants, the vast majority of whom hate Ukraine and everything it stands for? That makes no sense.

Most Ukrainian policymakers and most Ukrainian people appear determined to win back the Donbas territory occupied by Vladimir Putin’s troops and proxies. At the same time, they appear to be equally determined to lead normal lives, as if the war—and make no mistake, it is a war—were taking place in some distant land.

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WNU Editor: I have mentioned more than once in this blog that the people in the Dobass region are stubborn, hard headed, independent, fiercely pro-Russian, and impossible to subdue. When The Germans invaded in the Second World War .... this part of the Soviet Union was a hornets nest of partisan activity. The first strikes in the Soviet Union that eventually led to its downfall first started in the coal mines of the Donbas .... that even an army of KGB thugs could not suppress. And now this war .... sighhhh .... it took the Irish years to kick out the British .... I can say the same about this conflict. But all is not loss .... there is a political solution to this conflict .... give the people in the Donbas what they want .... autonomy. Unfortunately ....in Kiev this is the last thing that they want to do, and until its their own sons and daughters going to fight in this useless war .... there is going to be no accommodation from Kiev to reach the political settlement that this conflict so desperately needs.