World Affairs Journal: The Underdevelopment of the Donbas

A just-released study by the International Center for Future Research has some bad news for southeastern Ukraine. According to the center’s calculations, the quality of life is lowest in a coherent swath of territory running from south to east. Of Ukraine’s 27 provinces, Zaporizhzhya is 22nd, Mykolaiv is 23rd, Kherson is 24th, Luhansk is 25th, Donetsk is 26th, and Dnipropetrovsk is dead last. The two outliers are Kharkiv in the northeast, which is 2nd, and Chernihiv in the north, which is 21st.