Before there was a raging civil war that devastated the region's infrastructure and polarized its population, the Donbass region in Eastern Ukraine was an economically depressed area, far removed from the authority of the central government in Kyiv.
Russia's War Against Ukraine
Quartz: The broken-down beauty of eastern Ukraine, 25 years after the end of the USSR
Smoke rises from a factory hit by rockets during clashes between Ukrainian forces and rebels, Donetsk, east of Ukraine, July 21.
