Donetsk Leader: Capture Canal to Solve Water Crisis
“`html
Donetsk Water crisis: Russia Links Control to Solution
Table of Contents
Severe water shortages plague Russian-held Donetsk,with officials claiming full regional control is the only fix.
The Situation: A Growing Humanitarian Concern
DONETSK, Russian-controlled Ukraine – The head of the Russian-held Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, Denis Pushilin, said a water crisis that is forcing people to queue at water trucks can only be fixed if Russia takes full control of the region, including a vital canal.
Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia claimed as its own in 2022 as part of what it cast as a defensive “special military operation”,an assertion that Kyiv and most Western countries reject as an illegal land grab.
Moscow currently controls around 75% of the donetsk region and Russian forces are meeting fierce Ukrainian resistance as they push to take the rest of it.
Severe water shortages in the chunk it does control, which local residents say make carrying out simple daily tasks arduous, have become a headache for Moscow, which wants to show its presence is improving people’s lives.
A group of residents sent an open letter to Russian President vladimir Putin last month asking him to intervene in what they called “a humanitarian and ecological catastrophe”, and Ukrainian commentators have pointed to the problem to criticise Russian governance.
Details of the Crisis
speaking to Reuters in the city of Donetsk, where he said tap water was only available for several hours every three days, Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed head of the region, described the shortages as “sensitive.”
Pushilin, who appeared on Russian state TV this month in a Kremlin meeting with Putin who was quizzing him about the shortages, said water tankers and repair crews from Moscow had been drafted in and a water pipe built to bring water from the River Don.
“(But) the situation is realy difficult as it has no rapid solutions,” he said.
the only way to fix the issue woudl be for Russia to take control of the rest of donetsk, including a Soviet-era canal crucial to the region’s water supply.
The Canal and the Larger Context
The specific canal Pushilin refers to is likely the Seversky Donets-donbas Canal, a vital source of water for the region. Control of this canal has been a point of contention as 2014,when fighting began in the Donbas region. Ukraine previously controlled the sections of the canal that supplied water to Russian-held areas.
The water crisis is not new. Damage to infrastructure during the