📗 Seize the City, Undo the State: The Inception of Russia’s War on Ukraine. Serhiy Kudelia This book is the first micro-level study of the armed conflict in Donbas, a region in eastern Ukraine, based on over one hundred interviews with participants and observers. Focusing on the first six months of the conflict, it compares its dynamics in seventeen towns in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces as well as in Kharkiv and Odesa. In its explanation of the start of the conflict, the book bridges the divide between competing accounts which privilege either external or internal drivers. Instead, it shows that the Russian intervention gave an impetus for the war, but local actors created favorable conditions for its success and enabled Russian agents to organize the region’s secession from Ukraine. The book also demonstrates that the region’s residents were far from united in their embrace of the secessionist agenda. In fact, coordinated efforts of civic activists and local elites in some towns prevented their seizure by separatist forces and proved decisive in suppressing separatist challenges in Kharkiv and Odesa. Ultimately, the book argues that successful consolidation of separatist control over individual towns depended on the extent of insurgent coercive capacity, ability to influence town administration, and availability of allies among local elites, law enforcement, and political activists. https://academic.oup.com/book/59245?fbclid=IwY2xjawHrDtxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHSbO_vqhpaDhT3dYOsDXkK4UWnUa1sFgl5aRtuvvkDXIp_SfJgEfojI-0Q_aem_hwxBm26BTV50GOVzpz8cDg&login=false#login-purchase