The government is planning to build two airports in the Donbas region, according to a statement published on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s website on Oct. 3.
After Russia launched its war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the air connection with the Ukrainian-controlled territories of Donbas has been disrupted.
Zelensky said that the two new airports will be “a temporary alternative to the airports in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk” oblasts.
According to state television channel Dom, Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Oct. 4 that the exact locations of the airports are yet to be finalized.
Under the current plan, one of the airports will be built between Mariupol in the Donetsk Oblast and Berdiansk, 720 kilometers southeast of Kyiv in Zaporizhia Oblast.
The other one will be built near Kramatorsk, located 70 kilometers from the contact line and Sloviansk, 40 kilometers from the frontline in Donetsk Oblast, the TV channel reported.
Before Russia unleashed its war against Ukraine, there were three airports in the Donbas. Two of them are now in the temporarily occupied territories. That includes Donetsk Airport that was completely destroyed in the famous months-long battles in 2015. The third one is located outside of the Ukrainian-controlled city of Mariupol. It has been closed since June 2014 for safety reasons because it was thought to be too close to the frontline.
Zelensky said that the new infrastructure is to show investors who are worried about the war in eastern Ukraine that there are developments being made in the war-torn region.
Zelensky also said that the airports are to show people in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine the contrasting difference between where they live and the area past the contact line of the war.
