Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics take Ukrainian enterprises under control in response to Ukrainian coal blockade, further distancing themselves economically from Ukraine as they re-orient towards Russia.

With the coal blockade still underway, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics have acted on their threat and have effectively nationalised all remaining Ukrainian owned factories and economic facilities on their territories, though it is being described as a taking of the enterprises into ‘temporary administration’.

There is now also increasing talk of the two Republics re-orienting their trade even further towards Russia, with their coal exports and machinery being exported to Russia instead of Ukraine. Meanwhile the Russian rouble is already the de facto currency in both Republics.

If the intention of those behind the coal blockade was to strangle the two Republics economically, then what they have achieved in fact is simply to cause the two Republics to re-orient their economies even further towards Russia whilst causing further damage to the economy of Ukraine.

If the intention was instead to rally Western support behind Ukraine by talking up the nationalisation as a further act of ‘Russian aggression’, then those behind it should know that the Western media is barely reporting the story, and Donald Trump failed to mention Ukraine once in his