Marauders looted a Metro Cash & Carry hypermarket located near the Donetsk International Airport sometime after May 26 when management temporarily closed the store for customer and employee safety reasons, Olesya Olenytska, a spokeswoman for the German company’s Ukraine office told the Kyiv Post.
Heavy fighting took place on May 26-27 at the Donetsk
airport between Ukrainian counterterrorism forces and Kremlin-backed
separatists.
Olenytska added that “the police did nothing to stop
it.”
Citing Vkontakte social network messages, Segodnya.ua
reported that the store robbery was carried out overnight on May 29 by members
of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, a group that wants to secede from
Ukraine.
Law and order is virtually absent in the city where
pro-Russian groups have occupied several government buildings. Many in the
police force have either joined the Kremlin-backed movement or have quit.
“In order to assure the safety of our customers and
employees, the Metro store located on 7 Zlitna Street near Donetsk airport has
been temporarily closed as of May 26, 2014 until further notice. The rest of three
Metro stores in Donetsk region continue working in normal mode, serving our
customers,” Olenytska of Metro Cash & Carry Ukraine said.
There is one more Metro outlet in Donetsk, and one in
Mariupol and Makiyivka.
Metro Cash & Carry is a German-registered global
retailer that entered the Ukrainian market in 2003 and now operates 31
hypermarkets here.
Labeled terrorists by the Ukrainian government, DNR
members on May 27 occupied the ATB supermarket in the village of
Verkhnyotoretske in Donetsk Oblast, according to the Donetsk Oblast State Administration’s
press service. They did so to secure food.
On May 20, DNR leader Denis Pushilin threatened to
take over the assets of local businessman and Ukraine’s richest oligarch Rinat Akhmetov
for his support of the central government in Kyiv. Akhmetov has also stated he
will only pay taxes to the Ukrainian government.
The developments are seen as a general threat to all
the businesses in the region, especially foreign ones.
Several days earlier pro-Russian separatists in
Luhansk said the local McDonald’s restaurants must be shut down or their
buildings would be destroyed. Their explanation was that they do not want any
American companies to do business in Donbas.
Anti-Western political views are a usual thing among
separatists in eastern Ukraine since they perceive the current Ukrainian
government of being backed by Western countries.
