Purgin: DPR will be saved from extinction by shadow ties with Ukraine
Moscow - Kyiv, November 27 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Stamm) - The head of the DPR parliament, Andrei Purgin, admitted in a conversation with the writer Zakhar Prilepin that the humanitarian catastrophe in Donbass this winter is quite real: the Russian Federation is afraid to establish economic ties with the region, and Ukraine has officially cut them off. All hope lies in unofficial connections: according to Purgin, the DPR is becoming a gray Ukrainian offshore, and that suits him.
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A real humanitarian catastrophe is approaching the Donbass, Prilepin believes. “Tomorrow the real cold will hit, and people will start to freeze out. We need colossal supplies from Russia, mobile kitchens, we urgently need to start heating,” he says in a conversation with Purgin, which he publishes today "KP".
Purgin fully acknowledges the danger. “Ukraine can simply cut us off, for example, from gas. Cut down the light. “It’s all serious,” he replies. “We are trying to agree on the restoration of the old Soviet gas pipeline.” According to him, in Donetsk heating has already been started almost everywhere, but in Lugansk it is not.
Judging by Purgin’s answers, Russia, for foreign policy reasons, is in no hurry to establish economic cooperation with the DPR and LPR, limiting itself to the supply of humanitarian aid, which is in short supply and cannot be sufficient in principle. Therefore, local authorities hope for smuggling connections with Ukraine, and Purgin provides something like a theoretical basis for this.
“We are saved by the inertia of interdependence with Ukraine, oddly enough,” he told Prilepin. – There is such a concept, the coefficient of connection between regions. The departure of Crimea was predetermined; its coefficient of connection with the rest of Ukraine was 8–12 times less than that of Donetsk. We, no matter how it sounds, are an ordinary Ukrainian region.”
“I don’t see the point in closing ourselves off from Ukraine,” the chairman of the DPR parliament further argues. “We are becoming an offshore company right before our eyes.” People took, so to speak, made cigarettes or vodka here and took them to Ukraine. They don’t care about excise taxes.”
However, even Purgin doubts that this can prevent a catastrophe in the region, where millions of people, including the old and sick, are left without a source of livelihood.
“Our task is to wedge ourselves into every connection that we can think of with Russia,” he says. – To get through to her government orders. Move closer to the standards of the Customs Union. And that’s three years of work if we start now.”
Purgin did not specify why this cannot be done earlier than in three years.
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