Escalation in ORDLO on Easter: how it will affect the economy

Author

Kirill Danilchenko

How can the local escalation in ORDLO (the abbreviation denoting the temporarily uncontrolled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions) affect the Ukrainian economy, if the "Easter" truce never works? However, it is still worth clarifying—nothing extraordinary is going on at the front, all this sluggish confrontation has been for many months and, most likely, will continue.

Traditions

The tradition of "Easter", "Christmas", "harvest" and "school" truces in the war arises, of course, not from the east of Ukraine. The most famous is the spontaneous truce on Christmas Eve during the First World War. When soldiers left the trenches en masse, they cleared the no-mans land to play football or chat. More than 100,000 people on both sides of the front, who had killed each other the day before, had drowned up to their hips in the mud, had attacked each other with bayonets, left the fortifications to bury their comrades.

But then the soldiers decorated the barbed wire with garlands and handmade toys, held joint funerals and Christmas services, exchanged small gifts—tobacco pouches, souvenirs from home, buttonholes, and buttons. To return the soldiers to their positions, it came even to military tribunals and artillery barrage.

But, in principle, and without spontaneous fraternization in all protracted conflicts, there were attempts to officially de-escalate the situation on important holidays or key seasons of the agricultural cycle. Because life, despite the war, continues. For it is necessary to conduct the sowing campaign, provide access to the repair of critical infrastructure, give people a release in the midst of the horrors and hardships of positional confrontation. In the war that has been going on since 2014 in eastern Ukraine, additional ceasefire measures were usually signed or a joint text on an armistice was agreed upon, but this did not happen on Easter 2021.

Easter cannonade

The militants of the unrecognized republics accused the Ukrainian side of PR on the peace process, Kravchuk responded by saying that Kyiv was ready to terminate Minsk if it outlived its usefulness. At the front, a sluggish confrontation continues with 6-10 fire contacts per day. However, sometimes it explodes in raids of 122-mm and 152-mm—as recently near Vodiane in the south or along the front in Donetsk. The hospital in Krasnohorivka had it tough on the night of May 5—the walls were slashed, the windows were broken, the ambulance was damaged.

Probably, the militants were hammering the waste land and positions near the stadium, but an overshooting occured. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have three fallen during the past week only—from the 58th brigade in Peski, from the 93rd, and there were deaths at the hospital stage. The enemy officially confirmed 5 dead.

In short, it is another round of the war of attrition. But will it affect the economy? Undoubtedly, in general, the conflict has already strongly affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. Sooner or later, the issue of pensions of those living on the line of combat contact will bluntly come up—the situation with jobs there, for obvious reasons, has worsened. And 7 years have passed like a bullet. One of the UN's Red Zone relief programs a couple of years ago was giving out 10 chickens and feed stocks to vary the diet with eggs. So, many families now live far from prosperous, and the prospects for them are vague.

Luhansk region

The territory of the Luhansk region under the control of Ukraine, with the exception of the TPP in the town of Shchastya or the cardboard factory in the city of Rubizhne, is mainly agriculture—1,046 agro-industrial enterprises compared to a little more than 400 small enterprises in production. In those areas where, in theory, hostilities can reach, agriculture has already suffered enough—there are many examples, the same fish ponds or greenhouses in Stanytsia Luhanska.

But the positions of the parties are separated by a river, a dense mine belt and a ledge near Slovianoserbsk—there, the AFU has a dominating height in the sector. Anyway, the chance that hostilities will escalate to such an extent that they will affect agricultural farms beyond the Donets is disappearing. It would take a deep corpus-level operation within weeks with minimal chance of success.

Moreover, the average salary in the Luhansk region is 11,259 UAH (29,982 RUB). Not only is it twice as high as in the unrecognized "republic", but also higher than in many regions in the Russian Federation where factories were not destroyed for obtaining metal and where there was no large-caliber fire—especially in the Non-Black Earth Region, the North Caucasus, and Stavropol. So, seizing another Uglegorsk in order to plunge it into poverty for years and a curfew on the Russian Federation budget is not a good idea even for those who have left ORDLO.

Donetsk region

And the Donetsk region has overtaken the Rostov region at all in terms of the average salary. But on the territories under our control, the metallurgical plants and the port in Mariupol, and Avdiivka Coke Plant are quite sensitive heavy industries, especially if ping-pong from 152-mm artillery continues. However, the enemy can hammer more or less effectively only Avdiivka and Kurakhove, for Mariupol, "Hurricanes" and "Tornadoes" will already be needed. And for the screws will be tightened with sanctions—if the Council of Europe is already threatening to disconnect payment systems and impose sectoral restrictions in the case of aggression expansion, it means that the Kremlin has reached the ceiling of "concern".

Especially since the front line passes through Trudivska mine, near the Volvo Center, the suburbs of Yasynuvata, the detached house suburbs of Horlivka. If the fuel is added to the controversy, the unrecognized republics will suffer more, for which 10,000 RUB is the median income, and there is a fight on the line of contact for 16 16,000 RUB (the salary of a cleaning woman in the controlled territories).

In the meantime, the sowing of grain in the Luhansk region has ended, and the Donetsk region has finished sowing by 90%. The attempt to blockade the port of Mariupol failed—7 million tons of cargo in 2020, which is 8% more than in 2019. Steel production fell slightly. On the other hand, the production of pig iron increased insignificantly.

The situation with the economy in the controlled territories is stable, and it is many times better than in the occupied parts of ORDLO. And it is definitely not worse than in most of the Russian regions that are not engaged in hydrocarbon production. Therefore, the threats that Russian puppets will not approve another truce are another promise to bomb Voronezh from the Kremlin.