I wrote on FR sometime back about shakhtyory (coal miners) sometime back, when I was living in Antratsit, Lugansk district. It didn't make the cut during one of FR's many upgrades, but I've saved it here:
While he was there he'd talked to a few of the miners who have been shipped in from the East to rally support for Yanukovych, the second-round "winner." They were O.K. guys, he said, enjoying an all-expenses, all-vodka trip to the big city with no plans to stick around for long. We'll see.
This lends itself to the editorial yesterday in the Kyiv Post titled: Eastern Ukraine must be rescued from the separatists
Coal has been siphoned from mines, leaving them so dangerous that miners are often dying in methane explosions, and so unprofitable that miners aren’t paid.
These shameless tycoons have, in recent weeks, sent these very coalminers to Kyiv to agitate in their – the tycoons’ - interests. Faced with a Viktor Yushchenko presidency in which they might lose control of the assets they questionably attained, Ukraine’s rapacious business elite are now hiding behind their exploited workforce, and using it as a means with which to establish an autonomous eastern Ukrainian republic.
My heart goes out to these miners -just when will they realize that it is in their best interest to rid themselves of massive corruption. They need Yushchenko - only then will Kuchma, his billionaire son-in-law Pinchuk & 38 yr old billionaire, Akhmetov be indicted.
I wrote on FR sometime back about shakhtyory (coal miners) sometime back, when I was living in Antratsit, Lugansk district. It didn't make the cut during one of FR's many upgrades, but I've saved it here: