Weeks after ultra right radicals began blocking coal deliveries to Ukraine from Donbass, and after weeks of calling on the radicals to end the blockade, Ukraine’s government in the form of Ukraine’s National Defence and Security Council has legalised it, declaring all transport links with Ukraine blocked as of this afternoon.
I agree with the main thrust of Alexander Mercouris’ analysis of the counterproductive nature of Kiev’s blockade of the Donbass.
The blockade severs lingering economic links with Ukraine while raising the impetus to accelerate integration with Russia, puts at risk the recent strong Ukrainian economic recovery, and as Mercouris emphasizes, and top off all the zradas, it doesn’t even attract the Western attention that it once did in the pre-Trump era
In a further sign of the political chaos sweeping the country, rumours are circulating that Valeria Gontareva, Ukraine’s Central Bank chair, is contemplating resignation.
This follows a protest where a coffin was left at the entrance of the Central Bank and a report by the Central Bank that the current coal blockade will lead to a fall of 1.5% in Ukraine’s already sharply reduced GDP.
With the coal blockade still underway, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics have acted on their threat and have effectively nationalised all remaining Ukrainian owned factories and economic facilities on their territories, though it is being described as a taking of the enterprises into ‘temporary administration’.
The Russian Interfax news agency is reporting that Boris Gryzlov, Russia’s point man in the Ukrainian conflict, has today issued a warning to Kiev that Russia will take unspecified action unless the coal blockade is lifted.
This follows warnings from Moscow that Russia will not allow a humanitarian catastrophe in the Donbass and from the authorities of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics that they will enact a wholesale nationalisation of all Ukrainian owned plants and businesses within the Republics’ territories on 1st March 2017 unless the blockade is lifted.
The last few weeks have witnessed an acceleration of Ukraine’s downward slide.
Following the bitter fighting in and around Avdeevka and the angry telephone exchange between Russian President Putin and German Chancellor Merkel, an attempt was made to bring the fighting in the area around Avdeevka to an end and to arrange for a mutual pullback of forces to the starting lines.
