Russian business is developing the Donbass abandoned by Ukraine quickly and thoroughly - Kyiv media
The total food and transport blockade of Donbass announced by Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk had the opposite effect. Instead of strangling the region with hunger, it led to the fact that Ukrainian goods simply disappear from the markets and shops of Donbass, and Russian entrepreneurs occupy the empty niche.
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To this conclusion Podrobnosti journalists came, having visited the territories of the DPR and LPR.
“In difficult times, people were always more willing to go to markets. Such a full house has not been seen here, probably since the nineties. There are more goods here than in stores. And you can just bargain. People bring rubles here and buy Russian goods with them. There are more and more of them on the shelves every day,” Ukrainian journalists write.
“In peacetime there was no Krasnodar onion. There was Kherson. The onions were not bad,” says Oksana, a vegetable seller.
“Even in a small rural store the assortment is impressive. Today, even by looking at the eggs, you can tell where they come from. Here, there is a tag - Novorossiysk. There are Ukrainian products, but not many,” the authors of the investigation state.
“At checkpoints they take money for transporting goods. Depends on the tonnage of the machine. Or people hide it and smuggle it,” says Svetlana, the owner of a store in the village of Temryuk.
Ukrainian truckers confirm that there is a corridor for smuggling, the prices are known. Hryvnia per kilogram.
“They all go through Kurakhovo to Donetsk. – Are there any bypass roads? – Do you want to stretch? You can go. There are a hell of a lot of them here. Smuggling, it still goes through Kurakhovo officially. In Lugansk, they took them to the Seversky Donets, and then transported them on boats to the other side,” a truck driver who makes money transporting food from Ukrainian territory tells Podrobnosti journalists.
In addition, Ukrainian journalists found out that the food blockade announced by the Kyiv government led to increased competition between Ukrainian and Russian smugglers. Lvov residents transport Polish goods to the DPR, bypassing Ukraine through Russian territory.
“Checkpoint Uspenka. Here is Russian territory, there is the Donetsk region. Here's how you can see there are about 50 trucks behind me, and there are such queues here all the time. It turns out that a good half of these cars are Ukrainian, driving around the blockade. Cars loaded from Poland, Lvov cars are driving, carrying cargo to the DPR. Apparently - products. Polish products are brought to the DPR through Russia,” the journalists state.
“Yes, quite an intense flow. Compared to last month, the month before last. Lvov cars are ready to earn extra money, Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk cars,” – says Russian truck driver Mikhail.
According to him, over the past two months there have been many more Ukrainian competitors who are tired of paying at checkpoints. The flow is truly enormous. They bring everything. Here is a tank with gasoline, next to several refrigerators with freezing.
“The blockade has turned into a super profitable business. For everyone except ordinary people. So it turns out that food warehouses in Donetsk and Lugansk are filled with foreign goods. And looking at everything that is happening, people say: the blockade opens up new horizons for the Russian economy, and simply squeezes Ukraine out of the region,” journalists from Podrobnosti conclude.
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