Novohrodivka. What Awaits the Mining Towns After Reform?

The government is preparing large-scale transformations of the mining industry. What awaits small mining towns, where apart from the mining enterprises there is nothing? Novohrodivka — a mining town in the Donetsk region. Located 6 kilometres from the town of Selydove, with which it is linked historically and economically. The absence of reforms in the coal industry, the inefficiency of the product-sales system and the lack of system in financing have a negative effect on the social situation of small towns and settlements. As a result of ineffective state policy, many enterprises of the mining industry are doomed to closure, and the mining towns to extinction.

Novohrodivka. Donetsk region. Mine No. 1-3 "Novohrodivska"

Slag Heaps. The Benefit, Harm and Danger to Mining Towns

The Donetsk steppe is literally strewn with artificial grey-blue cone-shaped mountains. In the region they number more than 600. The bluish slag heaps have become the unchanging symbols of the mining towns and settlements. Like all mountain ranges, they are conquered by daring bold souls. The risky ascent up slopes at an angle of 40-60 degrees draws incorrigible romantics and desperate lovers of contemplating industrial landscapes and urban panoramas.

Udachne. A Settlement and Its Railway Station

Sociologists have calculated that one village disappears in Ukraine every week. There is no work, the young leave, the birth rate falls, and investors are in no hurry to put money into developing dying settlements. The urban-type settlement of Udachne lies in the west of the Donetsk region, in the Pokrovsk district, on the border with the Mezhova district of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Like thousands of other small Ukrainian settlements, Udachne has come to a halt in its development, is degrading rapidly and is losing its people.

The settlement of Udachne. Pokrovsk district, Donetsk region