After three years of war, the Russians are hardening their stance towards Ukraine. Without a stronger response from the West and Ukraine’s leaders, Ukraine stands to forever lose parts of the eastern Donbas now under Russian-separatist control. The area amounts to 2.5 percent of Ukraine’s territory or 15,341 square kilometers.
The Russian side has begun a campaign to nationalize Ukrainian businesses in areas it controls, including the regional capitals of Donetsk and Luhansk, which together had pre-war populations of 1.5 million people.
Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov and other Donbas oligarchs, with heavy investments in steel, coal and chemical plants, stand to lose the most. But Akhmetov appears to be striking back.
Akhmetov countered this week in two ways:
On March 2, the owner of fixed-phone monopoly Ukrtelecom switched off part of its network, cutting internet and telephone services for almost 200,000 people, after a separatist takeover of his Donetsk office. The office and its 900 employees had continued working even after Russian-backed forces occupied those territories, because the regulator – the Ukrainian State Centre of Radio Frequencies – told them to keep going. Additionally, Akhmetov’s charitable foundation also announced it would stop distributing aid and warned of a humanitarian catastrophe.
The Russian-backed actions come in response to a blockade for the last several weeks of rail lines by Ukrainian nationalists who want to disrupt transport, particularly of coal, from separatist areas to Ukrainian-government controlled ones.
The escalating enmity has also seen Russia agree to recognize “passports” issued by their puppet proxies who insist on calling their territories the “Luhansk People’s Republic” and “Donetsk People’s Republic.” Additionally, the Luhansk areas under Russian control are switching officially to the Russian ruble as currency.
Some argue that Ukrainian citizens living under Russian-occupied territory should be treated no differently than any other citizens, when it comes to public services and pensions. We disagree. Ukraine should not be trading with the enemy or helping to prop up the international lawlessness of the armed occupiers.
The only solution to the problem is to go back to the basics: Russian withdrawal of troops, arms and financial support for their instigated war and a retreat to their internationally recognized borders – meaning withdrawal from the east and Crimea.
