Donetsk’s Future: Population Outflow and Donbas Industry

I think that a significant part of the industry

of Donbas will not

be restored.

What fate awaits Donetsk in the event of

international recognition of this territory

as Russian, and in the event it is not recognized?

What will the outflow of people be, and where? As for

the outflow of people,

it depends first and foremost on the local

authorities.

If

the local authorities govern Ukrainian-style,

as they periodically try to do in the new territories,

regardless of whether it is Donetsk,

Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia,

Kherson, Crimea, Sevastopol,

everywhere they periodically try,

so to speak, to roll back into

a corrupt state, yes. If they govern Ukrainian-style,

then people will flee en masse because this will be

markedly different from the situation

in other Russian territories.

There will be some outflow, because obviously, right now

it's both harder and more dangerous in Donetsk

than in other regions of Russia. Donetsk itself, as a large city,

can be brought more or less

quickly to the average Russian

standard of living. I think a significant part of

Donbas industry will not be restored.

I don't know specifically about

Donetsk's industrial enterprises,

yes,

but I think a significant part of Donbas industry

will not be restored,

because,

firstly,

the deposits have largely been depleted,

the mineral deposits on which

this—

the region's industry was built.

Since the early 2000s, Ukrainian metallurgy there

too, which was based in, well, Donetsk,

Dnipropetrovsk, Kryvyi Rih,

has gradually become uncompetitive on global markets.

Moreover, there is domestic competition,

and many enterprises, essentially, need to be rebuilt from scratch,

not the walls, but the plants themselves,

need to be built from scratch.

And they can no longer be modernized.

You need to

simply buy new equipment.

Then again, the people scattered, who had

worked there for around ten, or even fifteen

years. There simply isn't the very... or perhaps even twenty

years already,

there hasn't been the very... They haven't trained

new generations, and they did not acquire the relevant

experience. Therefore,

even simply recruiting people to

work at these

enterprises is extremely difficult.

Therefore, I think that

a significant share of industrial enterprises

will disappear.

Well, finally it has become clear what

the residents of Don-