> devs don't care about the operational side.

That's an org issue. For a given service dozens of roles will be involved, if devs are needed to do every single of them to care and be invested, there is a problem.

> [...] Only your developers can answer this question, not the ops team.

Yes. Those are questions that need an answer before a service is released, and the ops team need the veto power + sufficient means to escalate recurring issues in ways that will hurt the dev teams enough to make them care.