Even so, web developers always had the option of sticking with an imperative approach to UI, like using element.innerHTML = '...', but overwhelmingly they preferred more declarative solutions like React. You could just as easily make the argument that the shortcomings of HTML had nothing to do with its "declarativeness", since that part was retained. I think a more likely explanation is that HTML couldn't be used to express the more complicated SPAs that people wanted to build, and regardless of what you think about those, JS-based solutions had to fill that need.

Yeah, HTML is declarative but the issue is that it’s such in an extremely simple way.

Loops, conditions, and variables/transclusions are table stakes, and without them pure HTML is just tedious data entry with extra tags.

> at some point web development skills shifted from it to mostly js.

[citation needed]

I mean, it looks like this if you look at HN (the comments, not the code) and similar places, but imo less in the wild.

You and I can both claim opposite things without citation, but we both know which is closer to reality based on what skill is on demand in the job market and what's LOGICALLY required to make web apps with such and such capabilities.