Foreword

by Nickolai Denisov, ENVSEC regional desk officer for Eastern Europe, Geneva

As a doctoral student in Moscow, I did not see much of my university advisor. One of Russia’s first envi- ronmental ministers and the deputy prime-minister of the Soviet Union aſter the 1991 coup d’état, he sud- denly had to deal with a mountain of problems with the decaying union. Among the first were angry miners from Donbas banging their helmets in the centre of Moscow. As in many other places, miners were seen as the vanguard of political aspirations – and the reflection of growing des- peration in the industrial badlands.

Readers interested in history may remember Alexey Stakhanov and Ni- kita Kruschev, who both started their careers in Donetsk. Football fans wit- nessed the spectacular appearance of Shakhtar Donetsk in the 2009 UEFA Cup Final. Today the coal-producing and industrial region of Donetsk is Ukraine’s major centre of gravity, supplying the country with industrial output, tax revenue, pollution, and its

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business and political elite. In the re- gion itself the environment remains both a bottleneck and a solution for improving people’s lives: not an un- important concern given Donetsk’s special place on Ukraine’s agenda.

In this publication we have tried to collect data, thoughts and impressions from several years of cooperation be- tween the Environment and Security initiative and the people and authori- ties of Donetsk. Trough this coop- eration we wanted to bring solutions, which have worked in other parts of Europe, ranging from the Mining for Closure approach to providing citi- zens and decision-makers with under- standable and timely information. We are also determined to make this infor- mation clear and visible through maps, photographs, art and journalism.

Not least, we want to reveal Donetsk in all its diversity, with different faces, seen from the inside and the outside, beyond just coal and football.