Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Autonomy for the east will be good for rapacious tycoons, not for people who live in the Donbass

ime Minister Viktor Yanukovych -and the business moguls who support him - in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, rallying the population to support the authorities’ plan to give the regions autonomy.

Those eastern tycoons have, in the past decade, robbed the local populations, and used their control over the media to keep that a secret. They’ve skimmed the profits from coalmines, steel mills and other industrial sector giants, bringing them to the point of bankruptcy – and then used the funds they stole to buy the assets they’ve gutted for virtually nothing.

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.

That the Kremlin is supporting this movement is no surprise, as Ukraine’s northern neighbor has a history of using divide-and-conquer tactics to control what it considers it satellites.

Yushchenko and his supporters should more aggressively reach out to their hardworking brethren in eastern Ukraine, providing them with a more accurate picture of what is happening in the country, and urging them not to fall into the separatist trap.

The main message is simple. Yushchenko should point out that he was fired as prime minister when he tried to apply to the coal and steel sectors his government’s successful strategy for reforming Ukraine’s electricity sector. The reforms would have raised salaries for miners and steel workers and improved their work conditions. Eastern Ukrainians should be bombarded with the truth - that they’ve been exploited for too long.

Separatism would only strengthen the grip the tycoons have on them. It would also open the door to increased Russian influence, and the area might become like other separatist regions in the region, such as Transdniester, Ossetia and Abkhazia. One of Yanukovych’s main campaign slogans has been that he’ll be the guardian of peace, stability and prosperity. Have autonomy and separatism brought peace, stability and prosperity to Transdniester, Ossetia and Abkhazia? The answer, obviously, is no.