Donbas Water Woes Worsen, Supply Cuts to 6 More Cities

Authorities in the Russia-occupied sections of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on Wednesday announced water supplies to six cities would be drastically reduced or cut off completely, worsening a water crisis that has already left tens thousands of homes and businesses with bone-dry faucets for months.

Deliveries via water mains to the industrial cities of Yenakiyeve, Debaltseve and Bunhe (Yuzhnokomminarsk in Russian) will be turned off “as a temporary measure” immediately, and supplies to the cities Holubivka (Kirovsk in Russian), Zhadnivka and Shakhtarsk will be reduced by half until further notice, a statement from the occupation water utility Voda Donbassa said.

The collective pre-war population of the cities per Ukrainian census data was around 220,000 residents within city limits, and around 300-350,000 people including outlying towns and villages.

War damage to water mains and pump stations, shortages of water utility personnel due to conscription or evacuation, and a dry summer have left Russian-occupied districts of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions critically short of water. Among the worst-hit locations has been Donetsk, once Ukraine’s second-wealthiest city, with a pre-war population of more than a million residents.

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In an irate video statement recorded in Donetsk and published on Wednesday, local residents blamed the Russian-run occupation authority for failing to do its job and deliver water to citizens. They accused local officials of delivering water to big business, while stiffing taxpayers. Except for a few hours with taps turned on twice a week, water has been off in their apartment building for more than a month, the statement said.

“We call on you to do something about the violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, and deliver water, and make sure water is delivered to all persons equally… the inaction of managers in Voda Donbassa [the local water utility] is potentially corrupt. Right next to our homes [without water], there is the [high-end retail] Donets City shopping center. It has water and it is constantly working. This includes a car wash and the Bioritm sports club, including its showers, and the supermarket and the five restaurants. And in fall they’re planning to re-open the ice skating ring!”

In a late July public appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a pro-Russia Donbas resident identifying herself as Natalia She-Wolf accused Donbas authorities of negligence and, possibly, for conspiring with industry to continue water deliveries to regional factories and mines, while cutting off supplies to taxpayers.

“Why have rivers not been cleaned [dredged] for years? Money has been allocated for this. Why are water mains falling apart right in front of authorities? They are reporting that they are successful in the battle for water. Then why isn’t there any water? Why are businesses drinking rivers of water while old people have to get water in buckets? No one has announced a natural disaster. The factories are using water like they always have,” she said in a video. “This is not negligence, this is traitorous activity.”

On Aug. 5 the Kremlin formally recognized water shortages in the Donbas with a televised meeting in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Denis Pushilin, the Russia-appointed head of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR). During the discussion aired on state-controlled Russian media, Pushilin told Putin that occupied Ukraine is loyal to Russia and he and his administration would do “everything possible” to re-establish water deliveries to the region.

Since then, according to reports even in pro-Kremlin media, little has changed. On Aug. 20 Dmitry Steshin, a war correspondent for Russia’s major news magazine Komsomolskaya Pravda, wrote in his personal Telegram channel that he “had almost gone blind” after washing his face using water from a Donetsk city tap, because of amoebic microorganisms (Ancathomoeba) polluting city water mains.

“The water in Donetsk is not for use, not for washing, not for drinking. And there is no other source,” Steshin reported.

The regional utility Voda Donbassa in July cut water deliveries to Donetsk from 24/7 to once every three days for four hours, the independent Astra news agency reported. The stoppages and masses of water left unmoving in water mains makes a public health disaster practically inevitable, because amoeba colonies grow best in still water, Steshin predicted.

Authorities have moved to fill the gap with water truck deliveries to dry neighborhoods. At some buildings, near-riots have been reported between local residents desperate to fill containers before the truck’s supplies run out. But most water queues in Donetsk have been peaceful, local social media said, with mostly retirees and housewives waiting for hours to have a turn to fill containers.

“This is a nine-story apartment building. There is one faucet. There’s a big queue of people. Half of them have already given up. What’s worse… we have to drag the water up steps,” a local resident posted on the Telegram Donetsk Live channel on Monday. “Old people, sick people, people no longer young. We drag this water from the courtyard up stairs… It’s simply abuse of people.”

DPR ideologue Andrey Purgin, a leader of the Russian-sponsored separatist operation creating a pro-Moscow pseudo-state in east Ukraine in 2014, in another rare public criticism of occupation authorities said that the Donetsk region is becoming unlivable and that unaddressed water shortages are behind mass emigration from the region.

In comments published on Friday, Purgin accused DPR leadership of diverting critically scarce water to improve income of a water bottling business run by local police that, thanks to shortages, was making a killing selling to individual consumers.

“There are two [artesian] wells that are working. Water is delivered to a company that bottles drinking water. The company is directly linked to senior officials in the police. And so now the people in Donetsk are going to be buying that water [in bottles] for a very long time. And the present city authorities that run the six plants that clean the water, they will get money from us. They know better than us that there probably won’t be any drinking water in Donbas in the future.”

Pushilin’s statements over the years have repeatedly asserted his administration is honest and professional, and that complainers like Purgin are poorly informed or traitors to Russia.

The independent Russian investigative news group Insider in an Aug. 24 reported Voda Donbassa holds a 94 percent near-monopoly on centralized water deliveries in the region. Since Russian takeover endemic graft and corruption has prevented maintenance of old and construction of new water pipelines, the article said.

Pushilin on Tuesday convened an “Emergency Operational Meeting” at DPR headquarters in Donetsk to discuss with subordinates new measures needed to “stabilize the water situation,” and promised taxpayers his office would review a report about work on canals connecting Donetsk to the Russian water transportation system. In the interim, city authorities would erect a water storage container at every school in the city, so that “the fall semester can go forward,” Pushilin said in comments aired on occupation authority controlled media.

The long-term solution for Donetsk’s water shortages will be Russian conquest of rivers currently in Ukrainian hands flowing near DPR territory, Pushilin said. He did not state when that conquest might take place.