Reporter: About the new coal bed we opened, it seems that we don’t have anywhere to sell coal.

Alexander Zakharchenko: Why? We have our power plants that gladly accept this coal. We’ll get electric power and provide our homes with it. Our homes will be bright, warm, and comfortable…

Reporter: How long can we stand the blockade?

Zakharchenko: For 2 1/2 years we’ve already been living within the blockade…Despite whether there is or is not a blockade, they only make it worse for themselves. If idiocy were considered a sickness, everyone there already needs therapy.

…It’s their enterprises that are suffering. There is lack of spirit and lack of leaders.

Interview with Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the DPR

From Fort Russ

In small letters: “Truly our own.” In shield: “Made in the DPR”

For several weeks, neo-Nazis and other Ukrainian radicals have been blocking the rails that bring coal from Donbass to Ukraine. The coal necessary for the Ukrainian power stations providing about 40% of the country’s electricity. The Donbass alone supplies 37.5% of the coal used by these power stations.

Since the blockade has been total for five days, stockpiles at Ukrainian power plants now only cover 14 to 45 days of consumption, forcing the Ukrainian authorities to declare an energy emergency, and to consider rollng power outages to face the shortage.

The situation is so catastrophic that the EU has just brutally woken up and has called for an end to the commercial blockade of the Donbass.

Should we laugh or cry in the face of the very late awakening of the “European elites” in the face of a situation that has been going on for almost three years and whose radicalization has just revealed the whole danger, and not just for Ukraine?

For we must not deceive ourselves. If the EU reacts it is not for the beautiful eyes of the Ukrainians, that they do not care a fig about. No, if the EU reacts, it’s because the risk of collapse of the Ukrainian electricity grid would have terrible consequences for the neighboring countries, which are part of the EU, and would end up paying for the broken china of their Russiaphobic policies that border on the most profound idiocy.

Faced with this situation, the response of the leader of the RPD, Alexander Zakharchenko, is not lacking spice:

He wished to point out that the coal produced in the two peoples republics always had a secure outlet: the local market. The two republics have coal-fired power stations which supply them with electricity. Power plants that consume locally produced coal.

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