Despite collapsing markets, trains still move banned coal into Russia and onward to international buyers.
Collectively known as the Donbas region, both are home to highly productive, privately owned coal mines and steel factories, which were seized by the rebellion’s leaders in 2017. Since then, an endless line of rail cars has moved millions of tons of Ukrainian anthracite and steel into Russia, part of what U.S. and Ukrainian officials describe as an elaborate shell game that turns illegal contraband into hard currency.
, a Washington nonprofit group that specializes in data-driven analysis of illicit trade in conflict zones.Kurchenko, 34, is a longtime family friend of Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president who was driven from office during that country’s 2014 popular uprising and now lives in exile in Russia.
Since then, the region has become utterly dependent on Russia, which has spent billions of dollars propping up budgets “just to keep the elementary things going,” said Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist and expert on Eastern European economies. In April, a train with empty cars heads west from Russia’s Uspenskaya border crossing to pick up more coal and steel in eastern Ukraine.
In customs records, nearly a third of the coal shipments were linked to companies controlled by Kurchenko. In late 2018, Russian media reported that one of Kurchenko’s companies, Gaz-Alyans, had been given exclusive control over all coal exports from Ukraine. DTEK documents obtained by The Post listed 20 countries as recipients of Donbas coal, with Turkey, Romania, Belgium and Poland receiving the biggest share. Some customs records explicitly list European companies as the ultimate destination for Ukrainian coal transiting through Russia.
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