#akhmetov

[sitting-on-me-bum]

“In the footsteps of Pretender”

Bird: Superb Lyrebird

“This portfolio comprises photos of a single lyrebird who I closely followed over the course of 3 months while working on a short film on lyrebirds. I have spent over a hundred hours in the bush and witnessed the most interesting scenes of his behavior in a variety of weather conditions. My idea for selection of photos for the portfolio was not to represent the bird in all the beautiful display poses, but to try and condense my experience of observation into a short form to give the viewers an idea of the behavior of the bird outside of endless hours of feeding. This is my ode to this wonderful bird known to many locals as Pretender.”

by Elmar Akhmetov. Portfolio Winner.

BirdLife Australia Photography Awards

[mayhellsky]

🇰🇿

I needed a Kazakhstan design for one interesting drawing, so I made it myself.. And it seems that I did more than i needed. I think anyone can use this design, I will be happy if others like it, even if the design is not that special.

I listened to "Sektor Gaza - kazach'ya".

By the way, it was quite cold today, not lower than -20°, in the morning it was almost -30°.

[philanthropicpeople]

Shakhtar Donetsk Donates $25M

Shakhtar Donetsk Transfers Mykhailo Mudryk, Donates $25M

Shakhtar Donetsk is donating $25 million to a charity for Ukrainian families along with the transfer of player Mykhailo Mudryk to English team Chelsea. Football Club Shakhtar Donetsk is one of Ukraine’s two major football clubs. It’s had to move several times due to war, and currently cannot play due to the Russian invasion. Mudryk played for them from 2016 to 2022, and just recently has been…

[nullnvoid911]

Spetsnaz at the pro-Navalny protests on January 23, 2021.

Vadim Akhmetov / URU.ru, January 23, 2021

[mariacallous]

With Russia’s full-scale invasion now in its third year, destruction and reconstruction are still proceeding simultaneously in Ukraine. Be that as it may, Kyiv has been laying out big plans for the country’s post-war recovery, which will require more than just international investment. In an article originally written for Kit, journalist and researcher Konstantin Skorkin looks to the future and examines the key stumbling blocks for rebuilding Ukraine that are already emerging through the fog of war. The following translation has been abridged for length and clarity.

The following is an abridged translation that appeared in The Beet, a weekly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Sign up here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.

Even if Russia’s invasion ended today, according to the most conservative estimates, Ukraine’s reconstruction and recovery would cost around $500 billion and take at least 10 years. Kyiv has already taken the first steps on this long road, establishing a dedicated office for assessing the full extent of the damage, laying out a recovery plan, and securing tens of billions of dollars in international support for reconstruction. 

According to Bloomberg, Ukraine’s reconstruction could be “the biggest investment opportunity since at least World War II.” And companies worldwide are already jockeying for their piece of the pie. 

But rebuilding Ukraine will take more than cash. The war has dealt a terrible blow to the country’s human capital, from lives lost on the battlefield to civilians forced to flee abroad, many never to return. And bringing large numbers of people back to Ukraine is much harder than securing large amounts of funding. 

The damages 

Russia’s aggression has caused more than $150 billion in direct damage to Ukraine. The country’s GDP fell by 30 percent in 2022 and grew only 5 percent in 2023. The World Bank estimates the cost of reconstruction and recovery at $486 billion, while European Investment Bank chief Werner Hoyer predicts that Ukraine may require as much as $1.1 trillion in outside assistance to rebuild. 

Ukraine’s main export sectors, agriculture and metallurgy, have been hit especially hard. According to estimates from the Kyiv School of Economics, the agricultural sector has suffered more than $80 billion in damages and losses, with Russia occupying fertile areas in Ukraine’s south and east, and shelling and landmines rendering farmland in the north unusable. Ukraine’s richest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, has seen his agricultural holding HarvEast lose 70 percent of its arable land to Russian occupation. And one of Ukraine’s leading grain exporters, Nibulon, estimates its losses due to the war at more than $400 million. A Russian missile strike killed the company’s founder, grain tycoon Oleksiy Vadatursky, in July 2022.

The Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. May 10, 2022.

AFP / Scanpix / LETA

The Ukrainian steel industry, meanwhile, has seen two of its biggest producers turned to rubble: the Azovstal and the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works in occupied Mariupol. These two factories, which once accounted for 40 percent of Ukraine’s steel production, made up the core of Akhmetov’s Metinvest Group. In June 2023, the company estimated its total damages from the war at more than $3.5 billion. Two other major steelworks — Akhmetov’s Zaporizhstal and ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih (formerly Kryvorizhstal) — are operating at half capacity, while the Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant, located in the Dnipropetrovsk region, has suspended work altogether. 

Ukraine’s energy sector is also suffering, mainly due to sustained Russian attacks on its power plants. Last month, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia had destroyed “almost all” of Ukraine’s thermal power generation. And since Ukraine’s green energy infrastructure is concentrated in the south, Russian occupation has knocked out of commission 90 percent of its wind energy and half its solar power. 

For Ukrainians, the damage to power plants and the electric grid means living with rolling power and heating outages. Moreover, repaired energy infrastructure risks getting hit again — like Kharkiv’s Thermal Power Plant No. 5. After being damaged in a missile strike in September 2022, the power plant came back online this March only to suffer a devastating attack two weeks later. Repair work is expected to take at least a year. 

The Ukrainian authorities estimate that the country will need about $15 billion for immediate reconstruction and recovery efforts in 2024 alone. And Kyiv’s post-war Recovery Plan will require $750 billion over 10 years. Two-thirds of this funding is expected to come from Ukraine’s partners, with the remainder from private investors and confiscated assets from Russia and Russian oligarchs. 

In July 2022, 40 countries signed the Lugano Declaration, pledging to support Ukraine’s post-war recovery. According to Bloomberg, the European Union plans to “contribute the bulk” of this financial assistance, which could exceed 500 billion euros ($523 billion). E.U. countries are also kicking in individually: Finland’s Ukraine Investment Facility, for example, plans to fund 50 million euros ($54 million) worth of projects in 2025–2026. Other European countries — including Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, and Germany — have committed to helping rebuild specific Ukrainian regions. 

An aerial view of the destroyed engine room of the Trypilska TPP, one of Ukraine’s largest thermal power plants in the Kyiv region, following a Russian missile attack. April 11, 2024.

Kostiantyn Liberov / Libkos / Getty Images

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided more than $23 billion in humanitarian, economic, and development assistance to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion. Private companies are investing in Ukraine’s reconstruction, as well. In January, Kyiv announced that it was creating a Ukraine reconstruction bank with help from JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock. At the time, Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Rostyslav Shurma said the fund could launch in five or six months with close to $1 billion in committed capital.

Theoretically, reparations and confiscated assets from Russia could also be important in rebuilding Ukraine. However, this is easier said than done. The former will hinge on when (and, more importantly, how) the war ends, while the latter is the subject of ongoing policy debate. Western countries have frozen around $300 billion in sovereign Russian assets since February 2022. The U.S. is still developing legislation that would allow for seizing the $5–$8 billion under its jurisdiction, while the E.U. greenlit using the profits from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine just this week. 

The people 

The war has dealt perhaps the most terrible blow of all to Ukraine’s human potential. On top of causing tens of thousands of military and civilian losses, Russia’s invasion prompted one of the 21st century’s largest refugee waves. According to the United Nations, more than 6.4 million people have left Ukraine since February 2022. Some were forced to flee to Russia, but most found refuge in Europe.

More than two years on, many of these refugees have adapted to life in another country, and a significant proportion don’t plan to return home. A recent study by the U.N. Refugee Agency found that in the last year, the number of refugees who hope to go back to Ukraine has dropped from 77 percent to 65 percent. According to data from the Kyiv-based Center for Economic Strategy, between 1.3 million and 3.3 million Ukrainians may not return to Ukraine. 

A long line of Ukrainian drivers waiting to cross into Poland through the Shehyni border checkpoint. March 4, 2022.

Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

With the war still ongoing, European countries continue to extend temporary asylum to Ukrainian refugees, and governments faced with labor shortages are encouraging Ukrainians to integrate into their countries’ labor markets. (That said, some countries — such as Norway and Finland — have decided to provide one-time payments to Ukrainians who want to return home.) 

Then there’s the acute problem of displacement within Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has counted nearly five million internally displaced persons (IDPs). The aforementioned U.N. study found that 15 percent of Ukrainian IDPs have no intention or hope of returning to their former places of residence. For some, there’s nothing to return to: cities in the Donbas region like Bakhmut, Maryinka, and Avdiivka have been practically wiped off the map. 

In interviews for this article, three internally displaced Ukrainians complained about a lack of affordable housing and about difficulties obtaining compensation for their destroyed homes. For those whose homes are located in Russia-occupied territories, there’s no compensation available at all. Social support for IDPs is also minimal, with payments ranging from 2,000 to 3,000 hryvnias ($50 to $75) per month. The government also tightened eligibility for IDP benefits as of March 1.

The displaced Ukrainians said they receive a lot of help from the U.N., UNICEF, and European charities. Since 2023, the E.U. has financed a special program aimed at converting existing buildings in 10 Ukrainian cities into housing facilities for IDPs. However, the Kyiv-based Rating Group found that 60 percent of Ukrainians surveyed consider the restoration of jobs and businesses more important than direct financial support. 

The Rating Group poll also shows that opinions on reconstruction vary by region. For example, residents of western and central Ukraine are more supportive of postponing reconstruction until the war ends, whereas those living in eastern regions are more likely to support rebuilding as soon as possible. 

An aerial view of the total destruction in Bakhmut from heavy battles. September 27, 2023.

Libkos / Getty Images

Divisions such as these create additional tensions in society, which could, in turn, hinder Ukraine’s recovery. According to Rating Group’s director Oleksii Antypovych, a number of dividing lines have already begun to emerge, including between those who stayed (IDPs and the non-displaced), those who fled abroad, those who served in the army, and those who lost loved ones. “I think the biggest divisions are between those who are absorbed in the war ­— the mobilized and their families, people who lost their loved ones, residents of frontline territories — and those Ukrainians who are still trying to live a normal life,” sociologist Inna Volosevych told Politico earlier this year. 

At the same time, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology director Volodymyr Paniotto notes that people are far more aggressive in their opinions on social media than in real life. For example, KIIS found that nearly 90 percent of those surveyed in Ukraine bear no ill will towards Ukrainian refugees currently abroad. 

One way or another, Ukraine is on the verge of a demographic catastrophe. Polish political analyst Jadwiga Rogoża notes that current forecasts for Ukraine’s future population range from 24 to 35 million (compared to 48.5 million in 2001). Ukraine’s own Ministry of Social Policy estimates that the population could drop to 25 million by the end of 2050. What’s more, Ukraine is projected to have one of Europe’s oldest populations by 2030, since so many young people are leaving the country or dying at the front. 

As Rogoża explains, the dynamics of Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and economic development will depend on not only the level of spending on reconstruction but also the size, age, and health of the country’s population. “The slow and uneven reconstruction process may leave the map of Ukraine dotted with numerous ‘ghost towns’ — half-ruined places with no prospects for work and development,” she warns.

A woman begs in an underground passage in downtown Kyiv. October 20, 2023.

Roman Pilipey / AFP / Scanpix / LETA

The future

To get an idea of Ukraine’s potential post-war trajectory, it’s worth looking at the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s, which are perhaps the closest example of a major armed conflict in recent European history comparable to the war in Ukraine.

The wars that followed Yugoslavia’s collapse displaced around 3.7 million people in the 1990s, 700,000 of whom received temporary asylum in Germany. By 2000, 75 percent of these refugees had returned to their home country or another part of former Yugsolavia; another 15 percent settled in third countries and only 10 percent remained in Germany. 

However, the return of these refugees didn’t solve the demographic problems facing the Balkan countries, which were in a state of post-war devastation. “Migration flows only grew stronger after the war,” says Maksim Samorukov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “One of the reasons [for this was] tighter European integration; the war-torn countries of the Western Balkans simply couldn’t compete with Europe in terms of attractiveness for living.” 

Further rapprochement between Ukraine and the European Union, and the experiences of Ukrainian refugees living in the bloc, could produce similar results: many Ukrainians may very well prefer life in E.U. countries to the instability of post-war Ukraine.

For now, martial law remains a restraining factor on emigration. Ukraine’s borders have been closed to military-age men for more than two years, so 80 percent of Ukrainian refugees are women and children. Once martial law is lifted, however, many men will reunite with their families abroad and may even choose to stay there. 

As Alfred Kammer, the director of the International Monetary Fund’s European Department, has pointed out, Ukraine’s economic recovery will depend on a number of factors, including how many people return to the country and their home regions in the medium term. 

And though the fog of war makes economic forecasting difficult, some of what the future holds for Ukraine is already visible today.

According to Deloitte, the Ukrainian economy will not survive without structural changes. Agricultural exports, for example, will depend on developing rail routes as an alternative to maritime ports. And the metallurgy industry should not rely on restoring Soviet legacy infrastructure, but rather invest in innovative production such as green steel. 

Researcher Oleksandr Zabirko believes Ukraine’s Donbas could end up like other post-industrial regions of Europe, such as the Ruhr in Germany and Upper Silesia in Poland. “Obviously, the role of the E.U. in Ukraine’s recovery will be key, and I doubt that European investors will want to rebuild monstrous Soviet factories like Sievierodonetsk’s Azot and Mariupol’s Azovstal,” Zabirko speculates. In other words, E.U. investment will likely be aimed at developing new industries — running contrary to the interests of Ukrainian “steel barons” like Akhmetov. 

As such, post-war reconstruction could radically reshape Ukraine. Small- and medium-sized businesses, including ones in new industries like IT, began to flourish after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, but massive Soviet-built factories continued to play a key role in the country’s economy until Russia’s 2022 invasion. Now, it seems the country’s economic revival will largely depend on its ability to produce and sell high-tech goods.

A geographical shift in Ukraine’s economy is also underway, with enterprises moving from the industrial southeast to the country’s west and center. This shift, first and foremost, is for security reasons: even in the event of a frozen conflict, Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions will remain under constant threat. It’s also logistically more convenient since Ukraine has severed ties with its eastern neighbors and is strengthening its economic cooperation with the E.U. 

This westward migration began in March 2022, when the government launched a free relocation program for Ukrainian businesses. The program helped companies move their employees and equipment to safer regions. Enterprises that have taken advantage of the program range from a small Kyiv-based adhesive tape producer to the Zaporizhzhia Non-ferrous Metals Plant and the distillery behind Khortytsa vodka. 

Ukraine’s western and central regions are also taking in displaced people from the occupied territories. The Rating Group’s research shows trends towards population growth in the Zakarpattia, Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Odesa, and Dnipropetrovsk regions, as well as in Kyiv. 

According to sociologist Ella Libanova, who heads the Institute for Demography and Social Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the country’s central regions have the greatest potential for denser settlement. (Citing ecologists, Libanova said that much of western Ukraine has nearly reached its ecological carrying capacity, which means it will soon be impossible to build new housing, businesses, and industry there.) 

Libanova also estimates that Ukraine will need to attract around 300,000 immigrants annually to keep its population at the predicted 30 million. Given the low standard of living, these immigrants will most likely come from poorer countries.

* * *

When it comes to restoring any country, the most crucial factor isn’t money or the size of the population; the attitude of those living there and those who will return is far more important. Without their faith in the future, no amount of investment will work. 

And in this sense, things look optimistic for Ukraine. According to the Rating Group’s polls, despite all the hardships of wartime life and the setbacks at the front, 80 percent of Ukrainians believe their country’s future looks “rather promising.”

[tomirida]

anyway might post rare qazaq names i've found while working at the archive. one problem is that it's not always clear what the ethnicity of a particular person is especially if they have a generic surname like alimov or akhmetov so some of the names might actually be uyghur/uzbek/tatar/caucasian etc

[ubyr-babaj]

I don't really understand the people who want to fuck John Franklin, because I feel like I saw this guy 20+ times back in my uni days. If you show me a picture of him out of makeup and tell me his name is Ramil Akhmetov and he wrote a paper on bird symbolism in Shakespeare's plays he has also translated into Bashkir I'll be like, yeah, that seems legit, I might have seen him around the cafeteria.

[maximumphilosopheranchor]

Considering that all the other Ukrainian television channels were still in the hands of the oligarchs, Zelenskyy risked a lot, standing against a corrupt Ukrainian political system that, notwithstanding his decisive actions, might well have eaten him alive. In 2021, this was exactly what occurred with Akhmetov’s TV channels. The richest of all the Ukrainian oligarchs had strongly opposed the presidential law on de-oligarchization, and when it was enacted, Akhmetov’s TV channels exploded with attacks, some completely untrue, and the rest without much concern for journalistic ethics or balance. Only the Russian invasion stopped this bacchanalia of invenctive.

Iuliia Mendel, The Fight of Our Lives: My Time with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s Battle for Democracy, and What It Means for the World

[manfrommars2049]

Custom Glock by Ilnar Akhmetov via ImaginaryWeaponry

[canmom]

Animation Night 167: Vordum

So, Animation Night did not happen on Sunday because work got a bit intense. A tragedy, like unto getting stabbed to death in a gladiatorial arena. But worry not, for it survives, limping on, to the familiar Thursday timeslot...

Tonight the plan is very simple! We're going to be watching the feature-length claymation film Vordum: The Price of Death, by animator duo Alexey Akhmetov and Ivan Akhmetov who together comprise 'Susco Volkov'. The whole movie is on Youtube...

...and indeed has been for the last five years, but for some reason it's recently been popping up in peoples' suggestions, enthralling everyone who sees it with its intriguing and violent story. Here's the official blurb.

A group of strangers in a mysterious arena fight for their lives against cunning and unpredictable foes in order for each to achieve their desires in a test of Truth and Will in a callous and bloody challenge set by the Gods.

I'd love to tell you more than that but if there is online info about the making of this film, I haven't been able to track it down in the limited time. But the premise puts me in mind of Barry Purves's Achilles short. I have heard it compared to the game Fear and Hunger as well, which is very juicy.

So... let's check it out together this evening! Animation Night 177 will be at 10pm UK time, at the usual place, twitch.tv/canmom! Hope to see you theeeeeere!

(n.b. - the regular Animation Night will also run on Sunday, this is just the postponed one from last week.)

(Apologies that I couldn't do the normal long writeup this week. This is almost as brief as Animation Night 37. I will write more about this film next week once we've seen it.)

[argyrocratie]

​Clan capitalism

Ukraine became independent in 1991 following a referendum in which more than 90% of voters voted in favor.[3] Until 2014, Russia accepted this result and recognized Ukraine’s existence in a sort of regime of “limited sovereignty”. Ukraine was tied to its larger neighbor by economic relations[4] and Russia was able to use its local clients to influence internal political development. The latter has long been turbulent.

The period of economic transition in which Ukraine followed, to some extent, the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, quickly created a new capitalist class. At first, it was composed mainly of “red directors” (i.e., the managerial cadres of the Stalinist regime), and later also of broader layers – from the ranks of the technical intelligentsia, various parts of the state apparatus and the criminal underworld. The 1990s were a true Eldorado for this class, though often quite dangerous for its individual members. Using both legal and extralegal methods, it seized key enterprises and banks, which it either stripped of all assets or concentrated into giant holdings and investment groups. Profits were exported to tax havens. At the same time, it began to take control of the media and politics. Unlike its predecessors in the Stalinist nomenklatura, it also managed to integrate itself into the global capitalist class, at least in terms of the use of its consumption fund (yachts and luxury properties abroad, jets, as well as private investments in international financial markets).

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s real GDP per capita was in steady decline– up until 2000. Average life expectancy decreased from 70.5 (in 1989) to 67.7 years. Non-payment of wages,[5] work in the informal economy, and a decline in purchasing power became everyday realities for the Ukrainian working class. Although the numerous strikes, marches, hunger strikes, and blockades have managed to score some local successes (e.g., the payment of wage arrears, postponement of privatization, etc.), they failed to change the overall course or create a broader movement.

The story so far is not that different from the Russian one.[6] However, the centralization and consolidation that Putin implemented after the Asian financial crisis and the collapse of the ruble (1997–98) never took place in Ukraine. Putin gradually nationalized some energy companies, built a “power vertical”, whose backbone was formed by security service cadres and various personal friends, and subordinated the oligarchs to this structure. The latter has since overseen the distribution of rent derived mainly from fossil fuel extraction. Ukraine’s domestic capitalist class, by contrast, has remained divided into competing “clans” that are tied to specific sectors of the economy and geographic regions.[7] The rivalry between these factions of Ukrainian capital has been the basis of political instability.

The numerous movements of political protest which often also voiced social and welfare demands were always co-opted by a political project of one of the groups – either from the very beginning or gradually. The “Ukraine without Kuchma” (2001–2002) and “Arise, Ukraine!” (2002–2003) protests were directed against President Leonid Kuchma, involved in several scandals, including the murder of a journalist. The “Orange Revolution” (2004–2005) was in response to the electoral fraud of the then prime minister and presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, as well as the suspicious privatization of Ukraine’s largest steelworks in Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk Oblast), in which Kuchma’s brother-in-law was involved along with the former Donetsk gangster, Rinat Akhmetov. The movement “Rise up, Ukraine!” (2013) opposed President Yanukovych and his attempts to consolidate power. Finally, the Euromaidan (2014) was a reaction to his decision not to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union. The most successful of these movements, the Orange Revolution, and the Euromaidan, may have led to a change of political leadership, but they did not significantly shake the position of the clans, let alone the clan system as such. Ultimately, they became a means of bringing another faction of the domestic business class to power.

The lumpen-capitalist competition, in which one or the other faction gained control of the state (and thus preferential access to loans, subsidies and contracts), explains, at least in part, why the state has failed to impose a long-term, viable development plan on the country. On the other hand, this unstable environment also left some room for the development of a resistant civil society, including independent trade unions, activist organizations, and the radical left.[8]

Russia maintained an influence over Ukraine through those sections of the local capitalist class that were materially interested in maintaining close relations – for example, in the interests of their own sales, favorable prices for inputs (especially, but not exclusively, energy inputs), or gas transfer fees. The capital base of this faction was mainly concentrated in the Donbas, the former industrial heartland of the Soviet Union, home to a large Russian-speaking population and the birthplace of the Stakhanovite “movement”. In the 1990s it was the scene of the bloodiest conflicts within the capitalist class, a center of organized crime – but also the epicenter of the tragedy of the “old” working class, especially the miners. Their mass strikes in the late 1980s and early 1990s helped destroy the Soviet regime and win Ukraine’s independence,[9] but after a wave of privatizations, asset stripping and bankruptcies, many found themselves with no jobs or prospects. Between 1992 and 2013, the population of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts fell by 1.7 million, declining at twice the rate of the rest of the country.[10]

- karmína,“the tragedy of the ukrainian working class” (2022)

_ _ _

[3] This was about 76% of all eligible voters. In Crimea, support for independence was the weakest, at around 54% of the vote. Similarly in Crimea’s Sevastopol, which was a separate constituency – 57%. In Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, however, almost 84% of those who voted were in favor of independence. Wikipedia summarizes the results in detail.

[4] As recently as 2013, imports from Russia accounted for 29% of total imports of goods; exports to Russia accounted for almost 23% of Ukrainian exports of goods. By 2020, both indicators had dropped to 11% and 6%, respectively (see oec.world). On the other hand, exports to the EU15 already accounted for a larger share of total Ukrainian exports than exports to Russia in 2002. Thus, the dependence of Ukrainian industry on Russian gas and oil has played a decisive role. 

[5] A specific feature of the Ukrainian (as well as Russian) transition was that official unemployment never reached a level close to twenty percent, such as in Poland (2002) or Slovakia (2001). Workers in enterprises that ran into trouble remained formally employed but were not paid – although in many cases they continued to work. Sometimes they received payments in kind instead of cash.

[6] Of course, in many respects it is also reminiscent of the history of other former Eastern Bloc countries, including Slovakia.

[7] The history and structure of the “clans” is described in “The Oligarchic Democracy” by Sławomir Matuszak. See also “The Consolidation of Ukrainian Business Clans” by Viatcheslav Avioutskii.

[8] A peculiar phenomenon of political life in Ukraine was the emergence of a seriesof fake left-wing groups founded around 2000 by the same circle of people. These pseudo-organizations established contacts with foreign “internationals”, mainly of the Trotskyist variety, and lured material aid or money from them. It was enough to write that they identified with their political program and wanted to become a Ukrainian or Russian section. Despite personal meetings, it took three or four years for the foreign donors – delighted by the unexpected growth of the workers’ movement in the former Eastern Bloc – to discover that their “partners” were in fact political hucksters. The scandal had seriously damaged the international reputation of the Ukrainian left, though one may also pause at the credulity of Western leftists.

[9] On earlier strikes by Donbas miners for economic demands and democratization, see the documentary Perestroika from Below (1989). Later strikes had more explicit political demands, including national independence. See the interviews with strike leaders in Donetsk, as well as a brief documentary (with English subtitles). The history of miners’ protest from perestroika to 2000 is summarized in an essay by Vlad Mykhnenko subtitled “Ukrainian miners and their defeat”. See also the recollections of the Dnipro working-class militant, Oleg Dubrovsky, in a 1996 interview (in English), as well as his analysis of the process of privatization of the mining industry (in Russian).

[10] One of the consequences of the disintegration of the mining industry in the Donbas has been the growth of illegal mining in the so-called kopanki. A section of the 2005 documentary, Workingman’s Death, focuses on the phenomenon. The post-apocalyptic landscape of the Donetsk Oblast is depicted in the short documentary, Life After the Mine (2013).

[yuanwang]

@gonchayas, konstantin akhmetov ; you have your anger, and i have mine.

“ yet it’s only one of our rages that's bleeding out on the floor. ” and for a moment they return to their usual silence, accompanied by half-lidden staring. whether on purpose or not, alucard’s peculiarity of staring instead of speaking may come off as a pass of judgment to most around him (which, in most cases, was the point). hence the hounds previous words, surely. if he were a few thousand years younger there’d be pity offered too, though it’d be of better use to the—now—corpse on the floor. whatever excuses, pleas, or bribes they planned to weep in exchange for their life was drowned out by the sound of gargled blood while they tried to keep the remaining flesh of their neck intact. all which proved futile in the end. even if alucard was not present he’s sure the encounter would end much the same. which may be what irks him the most... it’s not as if the son of dracula appears to the land of the living once more to simply stretch his legs, there’d been enough reason to travel here and it was hardly humored. “ you do know what a lead is, don’t you? ”

[vinishbuzz]

"Facebook Accused of Allowing Kremlin-Linked Oligarch to Run Ads Calling for Uprisings Against Pro-Western Government in Moldova" #Facebook #Meta #Disinformation #RussianInterference #Moldova

According to a report by Business Insider, Facebook’s parent company Meta (formerly known as Facebook) allowed a Kremlin-linked oligarch to run political ads on its platform calling for uprisings against a pro-Western government in Moldova. The ads, which were reportedly paid for by Russian oligarch Renat Akhmetov, called for protests against the Moldovan government and promoted the views of…

[indegazettevanindegazettepuntbe]

Akhmetov’s strijd tegen Rusland: historische rechtszaak voor gerechtigheid https://www.indegazette.be/akhmetovs-strijd-tegen-rusland-historische-rechtszaak-voor-gerechtigheid/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[mariacallous]

In Russian-annexed Crimea, occupying authorities have nationalized about 700 pieces of private property and real estate belonging to Ukrainian businessmen and politicians, Vladimir Konstantinov, the head of the Crimean parliament, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

According to Konstantinov, the nationalized property includes land, buildings, business premises, in-progress construction sites, warehouses, and other property belonging to Ukrainian nationals “connected to the Kyiv authorities” who commit “unfriendly actions” against Russia.

Entrepreneurs and politicians whose property has been nationalized include Rinat Akhmetov, Igor Kolomoisky, Arseniy Yastenyuk, Nestor Shufrych, and Serhiy Taruta.

“The items that have become the property of Crimea are, according to our initial estimates, worth tens of billions of rubles,” said Konstantinov. He added that Crimean authorities planned to use the income to support participants in the “special military operation,” their families, and the families of dead soldiers.

After the value of the nationalized property is assessed, it will be auctioned off to owners who will “develop it in the interests of our country,” said Konstantinov.

On February 16, the Ukrainian authorities announced the transfer of Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska’s Ukrainian enterprises to state ownership.