Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
Most of the area to the west of the line Sumy-Poltava-Kirovograd is amongst the most lawless regions in the world, with Ukrainian and Russian organized crime controlling routes and some cities. In the rantburg.com archives in 2015, look up Mukachevo: I didn't realize it at the time, but Mukachevo was a village controlled by criminal gangs.
Those areas are so lawless that even the ruthless Soviet security services could not bring the region into Soviet control.
For our sake, I hope we didn't buy a pig in a poke, because I can see a time when we will wish for the kinder, gentler days of the Islamists instead of those jamokes. Think: hillbillies with AKs.
[ColonelCassad] The value of minerals in the regions of Ukraine according to Kyiv's version:
Donetsk 3.8 trillion ($45,372,760,380.00
Dnipropetrovsk 3.5 trillion ($41,790,700,350.00)
Luhansk 3.2 trillion ($38,208,640,320.00)
Poltava 709 billion ($8,465,601,870.90)
Kharkov 685 billion ($8,179,037,068.50)
Zaporizhia 605 billion ($7,223,821,060.50)
Zhytomyr 555 billion ($6,626,811,055.50)
Lviv 521 billion ($6,220,844,252.10)
Crimea 206 billion ($2,459,681,220.60)
Cherkasy 168 billion ($2,005,953,616.80)
Ivano-Frankivsk 99 billion ($1,182,079,809.90)
Zakarpattia 63 billion ($752,232,606.30
Sumy 62 billion ($740,292,406.20)
Volyn 46 billion ($549,249,204.60)
Rivne 43 billion ($513,428,604.30)
Nikolaev 38 billion ($453,727,603.80)
Khmelnytsky 31 billion ($370,146,203.10)
Chernigov 25 billion ($298,505,002.50)
Vinnytsia 24 billion ($286,564,802.40)
Black Sea 23 billion ($274,624,602.30)
Kyiv 21 billion ($250,744,202.10
Ternopil 14 billion ($167,162,801.40)
Kherson 10 billion ($119,402,001.00
Odessa 10 billion ($119,402,001.00
Chernivtsi 10 billion ($119,402,001.00)
Actually, to the question of the economic dimension of the war and what the winner gets. Control over the Southeast in the medium and long term will more than cover the economic costs of the war. The development of these areas in the long-term perspective will ensure serious growth of the country's economy.
And again to the question "was Donbas subsidized?"