The coal mines, their steep-sided slag heaps dotting the horizon like darkish pyramids, have been a defining function of japanese Ukraine for effectively over a century. They offered the Russian Empire, after which the Soviet Union, with a lot of its uncooked vitality. But the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the previous eight years of separatist battle with pro-Russian militias, and the Kremlin’s new offensive have mixed to drive most of the mines to shut.
