War on the horizon

Abstract Post-Soviet deindustrialization and the economic collapse of the 1990s led to a decline in the significance of the Donbas coal-mining region both economically and symbolically, while the start of the Russian war in Ukraine in 2014 aggravated the sense of isolation and fragmentation. The combined effects of these two forms of violence led to technocratic governance, in part promoted and encouraged by the international humanitarian organizations that entered the region after 2014. Where war and neoliberalism narrowed horizons for good life, fragmented technocratic governance limited horizons for political engagement. It also ignored and neglected the potential strengths of inherited socialist state infrastructure that could offer a safety net and a point of reference for citizens’ engagement with the world and each other.