Roland Oliphant has written a harrowing piece on the situation inside rebel-held Donetsk for "The Telegraph." Here's an excerpt:
The Russian-backed separatists who took up arms in April have succeeded in evicting the Ukrainian government from their self-proclaimed “people’s republics”, but they have as yet failed to build much of a functioning state to replace it.
That economic dislocation was compounded on December 1, when a decree signed by Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, suspended all state services and banking operations in rebel-held areas.
The decree is designed to force the rebels to shoulder the financial burden of running the areas they have seized – something they have so far proved incapable of doing.
As a result institutions from schools and hospitals to prisons and water treatment plants are bereft of funding. Residents must travel across the front line to access bank accounts, and credit cards have ceased to work.
“No one has any money. If there is food in the shops, we can’t afford to buy it,” said Irina Shtiben, a nursery worker queuing to receive Russian-donated clothes at the town’s cinema.
“It is worst for the elderly, the grandfathers and grandmothers who cannot leave the house to get to the soup kitchens or do not have family to help. They are the ones who will starve,” she said.
Read the entire article here.