A Requiem for the Donbas
A Review of "Life in Spite of Everything. Tales from the Ukrainian East" by Victoria Donovan.
I first visited Ukraine in Spring 2012 to try to establish contacts with universities there, being both hopeful and encouraged by the “Orange Revolution” of 2010. I joined a small delegation to Donetsk, Sevastopol and Kyiv. My first sight of Ukraine was of the vast steel works and mines as we circled to land at Donetsk airport. In fact the Donetsk was the most successful part of the trip.
We had a pleasant visit to the football stadium of Shakhtar Donetsk and while there it was announced that Donetsk would host the English team in the European Soccer Championship that summer. By happy coincidence the Vice-Chancellor of East London University, whose campus was to host some teams in the London Olympics, was alert to the potential link. We arranged for trainee journalists from East London and Donetsk universities to make exchanges to cover these major sporting events. Joyful anticipation all round. Now Donetsk is occupied by Putin's revanchist invasion.
It is the Donbas which drew the attention and sympathy of author Victoria Donavan, whose emotional engagement Ukraine's history of heavy industry of steel and coal is informed and enhanced by her own upbringing in the South Wales.
Donavan gives a detailed description of the geology of the Donbas and the history of the exploitation of its mineral resources. Readers may recall Trump’s early failed efforts to broker a peace deal in Russia’s war on Ukraine included an attempt to have access by US oligarchs to these mineral riches. An idea that may resurface in any ceasefire, temporary or permanent.
Donovan demonstrates how the Donbas, and Ukraine, has been the dynamo of Russian and Soviet industrialization. It was an economic development spurred by foreign investment. Western European, French, Belgian and British, investment launched the beginnings of the coal and steel industries in as ruthless a manner as any colonialization elsewhere in the world. And it was a Welsh industrial entrepreneur John Hughes, who played a prominent part. In fact, Hughes founded a city, which bore his name “Yuzovka”.
The Donbas was at the epicentre of the cult of the Stalinist working class hero when a Donbas born miner Stakhanov gained not only Soviet fame, but world fame amongst admirers of Stalin by breaking all records for hacking out tonnes of coal during one shift.
Donavan shares her encounters with Donbas citizens, many now sadly living as “displaced persons” in unoccupied Ukraine, who are coming to terms with their own collective memory with a mixture of nostalgia but also sharing a determination to move beyond the despoilation of “smokestack” industries.
Something many in South Wales, and other mining areas of the UK, Europe and North America, can identify with.
That process cannot be fully addressed for now in the war-torn Donbas, but the seeds are being sown by Donovan’s acquaintances and will fully bloom when peace comes.
Michael Hindley
April 2026
You can order the book through your local public lending library or an independent book shop.
Michael is a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP)and is now a freelance writer and speaker on international politics. He has been a guest lecturer at the Taras Schevchenko University, Kyiv and now as Coordinator of the Former MEPs’ guest lecturers’ programme has facilitated zoom exchanges with universities in the Ukraine. Later this month will participate a zoom seminar with Karazin University in Kharkiv.
Progressive, regional and independent media may wish to use this review in part or whole. Please contact: mhindley1947@gmail.com
Michael also posts on: @hindleylancs.bsky.social