Why the Difference? Donbas, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk After Ukraine’s Euromaidan Revolution

Abstract

The pro-Russian protests that spread across the east and south of Ukraine in the aftermath of the Euromaidan Revolution set largely similar regions on starkly different trajectories. While Donbas saw a successful rebellion and later slid into war, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk managed to avoid a separatist scenario. In this article, I examine the critical early stages of the pro-Russian unrest and argue that the initial success of the separatist rebellion in Donbas and its failure in Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk can be best explained by the differences in elite strategies and civil society organisation in the respective regions.