Russia's War Against Ukraine
OP-ED
Paul Stronski: Broken Ukraine; the mess isn’t all Russia’s fault
A woman walks under a billboard featuring a picture of the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) Alexander Zakharchenko (C) and reading: \"we are grateful to the defenders of the fatherland\" in Donetsk on March 18, 2015.
Continued violence between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine is dashing hopes about last month's Minsk II cease-fire agreement. February's terrorist attacks in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and the continued threat of a separatist assault on the strategic port city of Mariupol suggest no real pause in violence anytime soon. But that might not be eastern Ukraine's biggest problem: the region is now broken. The rise of an ungoverned, violent Donbass - which had a prewar population of six million - is likely to be one of the war's most important lasting legacies. This grim reality is a problem that few in the West are ready to acknowledge, let alone confront.
