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DEResidents of the temporarily occupied town of Alchevsk, Luhansk region, held a rally over non-payment of wages for five months.
Denys Kazansky, a journalist, representative of Donetsk in the Trilateral Contact Group on Donbas, shared details about the rally on his Facebook page.
About 20 current and former employees of a local metallurgical plant recorded a video address stating that there is almost nowhere to work in the occupied town. People have to go to work in the territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine, Poland, or Russia.
The occupation administration of the town and the militants, who seized the enterprise, ignore all appeals.
People say they have no money to live on and feed their children. Residents of the town cannot pay for utilities, the cost of which has increased significantly, and they are cut off from electricity and gas supply.
One of the protesters said that “there is a real genocide.”
According to Denys Kazansky, militants arrest people for such open protests in the occupied territories of Donbas, and the population is reluctant to protest. “The fact that the workers decided to speak openly means that they have already been ‘pushed over the edge’ and have nothing to lose,” the journalist said.
In his opinion, the situation in the certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions is now nearing a “social disaster.”
As a reminder, mass media reported several months ago that debts before workers of the Alchevsk Metallurgical Plant increased almost to half a billion rubles (about 200 million hryvnias). People are on strike and ask to influence the situation through negotiations in the Trilateral Contact Group.
Alchevsk Metallurgical Plant is a part of the Industrial Union of Donbas Corporation. The structures close to the Russian state corporation Vnesheconombank have been considered to be its main controllers since 2010.
Bohdan Marusyak
