From Subversion to Resistance: Lessons from Russia’s War in Ukraine

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, municipal leadership, democratic legitimacy, and civil society. They also revisit the debate over US military assistance, the Minsk process, and what outside partners can realistically accomplish when crises escalate faster than relationships, training, and logistics can be built.

Dr. Celeste A. Wallander is the executive director of Penn Washington, the University of Pennsylvania’s program in Washington, D.C. From 2022 to 2025, she served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. She previously served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Central Asia on the National Security Council from 2013 to 2017 and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia from 2009 to 2012. She has also served as president and CEO of the U.S.-Russia Foundation and held positions at American University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Serhiy Kudelia is a professor of political science at Baylor University. His research focuses on the onset and dynamics of insurgencies and civil wars, political regimes and regime change, and political institutions, with a geographic emphasis on Ukraine, Russia, and the former Sovie