Expert explains why decentralization reform has become critically important for Ukraine’s stability

The director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Ihor Semivolos, wrote on social media that the decentralization reform, which started in 2015 during the term of the fifth president, Petro Poroshenko, became the basis for the stability of the state after the start of the full-scale invasion.

According to the expert, its key impact could not be predicted either in Russia or in the West.

“During 2015–2020, Ukraine implemented one of the most ambitious local government reforms in the region: the real unification of communities, the transfer of resources and powers “to the places”, and most importantly, the formation of a new layer of local elites, tempered by the practice of independent decisions. Some Western analysts, in particular Chatham House back in 2019, noticed the geopolitical dimension of the reform, indicating that decentralization complicates the hybrid destabilization of regions. But no one predicted the connection between the reform and the military resilience of society,” Semivolos noted.

“The vast majority of international reports and donor organizations described decentralization in the categories of administrative efficiency, quality of services, and fiscal reform. The fact that communities are getting used to independent decisions and horizontal coordination — that is, exactly what will work in February 2022 — has practically remained off the analytical radar,” the expert is convinced.

“Moscow did not see this process at all — for the same reason that it ignored any other Ukrainian subjectivity. For the Kremlin, the state exists only as a rigid vertical: if it is broken in the center, the entire structure must crumble. What was happening in the communities, the autonomy they acquired and the habit of self-organization were simply outside the Russian analytical field. When in the spring of 2022, spontaneous resistance arose in the occupied areas without a visible central command, it was a real cognitive shock for the Russian military. They did not understand what they were dealing with — because in their model of the world, such a phenomenon as a self-sufficient community simply did not exist,” stated Igor Semivolos.

“Both blindnesses had a common nature, although different origins. Both Moscow and most Western analysts thought in vertical categories. For some, because other categories did not exist ideologically. For others, because the vertical is measurable, and the horizontal is not. The result was the same: the inability to see the horizontal as strategic. But there is a fundamental difference between the two types of blindness. The Western blindness was correctable — and after February 24 it began to correct itself quickly. The Russian blindness is structurally incorrigible, as long as the basic narrative of “one people” exists. To admit that the Ukrainian strategic culture is separate and that it turned out to be more effective at a critical moment would mean for the Kremlin to undermine the ontological foundation of the war itself. Therefore, even obvious facts were not converted into a rethinking,” the expert believes.

“The 2015–2020 decentralization reform imperceptibly fostered a new type of institutional subjectivity. Local self-government, having received real resources and the habit of making independent decisions, no longer fit into the logic of a “single chain of command,” the expert noted.

“The fact that Ukraine did not have an externally imposed framework for its own strategic identity meant that this identity was formed from within — slowly, controversially, through crises and disappointments. But that is precisely why, when the test came, it turned out to be organic, not imported. And organic — as February 2022 showed — turns out to be much more stable,” Ihor Semivolos assured.

“On the eve of February 24, the Ukrainian state machine actually split into three autonomous layers operating in different realities. The official vertical continued the policy of “appeasement”. Defense institutions were secretly preparing for the worst-case scenario, acting outside the official directives. Part of the vertical worked against it from the inside. This split became a key factor in the first days of the war – Ukraine survived not because the system worked as a single mechanism, but because military and civil subjectivity proved capable of acting autonomously when political logic reached a dead end,” he recalled.

“The army was ready — after eight years of combat experience and proactive training despite official prohibitions. Society reacted instantly through an activated reflex of horizontal coordination. Communities survived thanks to decentralization, which no one had originally planned as a strategic defense resource,” the author explained.

“On February 23, 2022, Ukraine entered a major war with a deeply controversial legacy — but with one hidden asset that was not seen in Moscow, the West, or, apparently, in part of the President’s Office itself: years of autonomous training of the system, which took place outside the vertical and often despite it. The next day, this resource began to speak for itself — Ukraine entered the battle not as a hierarchical structure waiting for orders, but as a living network capable of self-organization at points of rupture,” added Ihor Semivolos.

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