CROSSING CONTINENTS - Ukraine

NARRATOR:
I am in a metal cage going straight down 3,300 feet 
into one of the deepest coalmines in the world.  
It's a cage that normally takes about fifty miners. 
 We're being taken down specially because we've 
come here to Ukraine to look at one of the most 
deadly coal mining industries anywhere in the 
world.  In the twelve years since Ukraine's 
independence from the Soviet Union, four thousand 
miners or thereabouts have lost their lives in 
explosions and cave-ins.  No miner going 
underground at this Kalunin mine in the city of 
Donetzk can be absolutely sure that he'll be coming 
out alive again at the end of his six hour shift.  
I have to swallow because the pressure in here is 
changing as we go down.  

It's a complex web of reasons why the coal industry 
here has been kept going despite the awful cost in 
human lives, that we'll be trying to unravel in 
this week's Crossing Continents.

The doors are being opened and out of the cage we 
get.  

KOLEB: 
Underground the depth is one thousand metres.

NARRATOR:
One thousand metres!  These tunnels and shafts 
carry on a long way, seventy-five kilometres of 
tunnel I've just been told, and I've come down in 
the cage with Vladimir Koleb who is a consultant to 
the coal industry here.  I was told that they 
didn't have any fatal accidents in this mine but in 
other mines accidents are really quite frequent, 
aren't they?

KOLEB:
Yes unfortunately this is a very big problem.  I 
think two basic problems, one problem this is 
geology condition.  This is situation gas and 
other.

NARRATOR:
This is the methane building up that explodes quite 
frequently.

KOLEB:
Yes this one but this situation is related with 
very bad discipline.

NARRATOR:
So you're telling me it's the miners, it's the 
fault of the miners, they're not taking proper care 
of themselves?

KOLEB:
Yes.  

NARRATOR:
Maybe we could go along the mine shafts and meet 
some of these miners who you're blaming for the 
poor safety record in Ukraine's mines.

We're getting to a working area now.  We're being 
introduced to the foreman, a big guy in a tattered 
t-shirt.  Are you the foreman?  How long have you 
worked down this mine?

FOREMAN [translated]:
Twenty-four years.

NARRATOR:
Twenty-four years, in this mine?  Do you actually 
know anybody who's been injured or even killed in a 
mine accident?

FOREMAN [translated]:
He says he actually knows a lot of people.

NARRATOR:
A lot of people?  Why do you think that so many 
miners in the Ukraine are dying?

FOREMAN [translated]:
He says he can't tell really.

NARRATOR:
He said it very, shrugging his shoulders with a 
sort of fatalistic attitude he seems to have.  

I'm back above ground now thankfully and I've just 
driven across the city of Donetzk to a kind of 
urban wasteland punctuated by high rise apartment 
blocks.  Donetzk is a rather bleak modernist 
Soviet-style city that's slap bang in the middle of 
Ukraine's mining belt, the Dombats.  In fact the 
tunnels of the Kalunin mine that we've just been in 
probably run right underneath where I'm standing 
now.  I've started to realise that the miners that 
we met down the pit were probably too nervous to 
talk to us openly in the presence of the managers 
we were with which is why I've come here to talk to 
Yuri Kosmenko.  He's a former miner who can speak 
freely because he was disabled in a bad mine 
accident and he hasn't got anything left to lose.

So this is Yuri's flat on the third floor.  There's 
hardly room enough for the three of us to get in, 
really quite squalid and dingy I suppose.  We're in 
the darkness and Yuri's just lighting a candle.  
Don't you have electricity, Yuri?

YURI [translated]:
He says they cut off his electricity because of 
debts and he can't afford to pay because he's owed 
so much by the state.  Some of the arrears date 
back many years.

NARRATOR:
So you live just with candles, do you?

YURI [translated]:
We live by candles, he says, and no one cares.

NARRATOR:
What happened to you?

YURI [translated]:
In 1980 he says he worked in a mine at the coal 
face and there was a cave-in, he was trapped 
underneath and he got his spine broken.

NARRATOR:
How long were you caught under this rockfall?

YURI [translated]:
He says he had to wait for one and a half days 
before they got to him.  

NARRATOR:
One and a half days under the rock!  My god!

YURI [translated]:
He says he now has to live alone because his wife 
left him and the state just didn't care about him, 
especially since 1991, since the independence and 
they haven't provided a wheelchair for him and now 
basically he says no one cares for him.

NARRATOR:
Well there have been attempts to reforming the 
structure of the coal industry since Ukraine became 
independent.  About a hundred loss-making pits have 
been closed over the past six or seven years but 
with so many pits sunk deep in debt, the 
privatisation programme is still stuck pretty much 
on the starting blocks.  Some funding has been 
provided by the World Bank and the US government 
amongst others to help re-train miners, and also to 
try to make the industry just a bit safer, and I've 
come this morning to the offices of a US-funded 
organisation called PEER, the Partnership for 
Energy and Environment Reform.  The offices are 
festooned with the stars and stripes as well as the 
Ukrainian flag and sitting here with me is the 
deputy director of PEER, Valentine Chukedev. 

There are three to four hundred deaths each year, I 
mean there are more than one a day on average in 
the Ukraine, how many of those deaths would you say 
are unnecessary?

CHUKEDEV:
Well I'd say two-thirds.  

NARRATOR:
Two-thirds unnecessary?

CHUKEDEV:
Yes.  We are rated if it's black list of 
fatalities, second worldwide after China, third is 
Russia.  The major input to such a bad record of 
fatalities is because of group fatalities.

NARRATOR:
One of those big group fatality disasters was in, I 
think a mine called Barakov a year or two ago.  
What happened there?

CHUKEDEV:
They took a gas bottle, actually oxygen gas which 
was not allowed by safety rules, they took it 
underground.  The gas bottle lit and it exploded in 
combination with oil and coal dust, and then a 
fireball rolled around the underground workings for 
some seven miles or so killing people on its way, 
resulting in over eighty fatalities.

NARRATOR:
So that disaster at Barakov could have been avoided 
completely?

CHUKEDEV:
Sure, sure.  It was just you know unexplicably 
stupid so to speak.

NARRATOR:
Is it primarily the lack of investment which is the 
cause of the very bad safety record?

CHUKEDEV:
It's a combination of many factors.  One of them is 
lack of investment or lack of money, plus here 
negligence even among the workers, and up to the 
top management plus mentality is to be changed 
towards safety because the value of human life was 
not so much rated high in the former USSR 
countries.

NARRATOR:
So many of these mines are making losses, why not 
just close down the sector?

CHUKEDEV:
You can't just drop people like that after decades 
of exploiting them under the old system.

NARRATOR:
So the answer is what, to close down the worst 
ones?

CHUKEDEV:
Right.

NARRATOR:
And then what, to prop up and then privatise the 
best ones?

CHUKEDEV:
Yes but take care of people, take care of 
investments, take care of privatisation and we will 
be standing firmly on our feet in ...

NARRATOR:
You hope.

CHUKEDEV:
But if we don't hope, then come up to the gate of 
Ukraine, put a padlock and say goodbye to all those 
people.  Leave this country, leave this land if 
it's hopeless.

NARRATOR:
There are places though where hope has pretty much 
run out.  I've heard tell of these ghost towns 
where the local mine has been shut down and 
desperate people have turned to illegal mining, 
either boring their way into old disused 
mineshafts, or just digging holes in the ground and 
scraping out whatever coal they can get.  Dangerous 
does not even begin to describe it.  Well we've 
driven out from Donetzk towards the Russian border 
to try to search out some of these illegal miners 
and here on the outskirts of a town called Torres - 
darkness starting to close in, freezing cold, giant 
slag heaps all around us - we've found what we were 
looking for.

It really is a male world, a very harsh world but 
amazingly we've just been accosted by this middle-
aged or late middle-aged woman.  She's wearing a 
really threadbare looking coat, she's got her hair 
in a headscarf and she's got a thin cotton floral 
smock on and she's actually wearing slippers, 
carpet slippers on her feet in all this snow.  

You're also a miner?  You've got a mine of your 
own?

LUBA [translated]:
Yes she says, I've got my own mine.  You can see 
right now.

NARRATOR:
Shall we go and see?  Will you take us?  Well we're 
going to down this illegal mine now.  I can't tell 
you how primitive it is on this - snowscape with 
just the bare skeletons of trees and Luba, this 
woman wearing her bedroom slippers is taking us 
down here.  We're coming to what is effectively 
just a hole in the ground, and here we go inside.  
And I have to get down so I'm just doubled really, 
crouching to get along the bottom.  It's completely 
dark ahead.  Down, down.  We've come to the 
coalface I suppose it is here.

LUBA [translated]:
She says it was very scary at the beginning when 
her husband first brought her here.  She was 
holding his hand all the time, she was trembling 
but now she feels absolutely fine she says and she 
can even come down here at night alone.

NARRATOR:
Do you know anybody who's been injured, any of your 
friends working in mines who've been injured or 
even killed in mine accidents?

LUBA [translated]:
She says in this mine they didn't have any 
accidents but in a neighbouring pit, only last 
Friday two people died.  They suffocated, they got 
to them but it was too late.

NARRATOR:
Is it very hard work, I mean is it very tough?

LUBA [translated]:
She says of course it is, it is difficult.  I am 
too old for this work but we have to eat something, 
we have to earn some money.

NARRATOR:
I've got to ask you Luba, do you always wear carpet 
slippers down the mine?

LUBA [translated]:
She says she actually wears boots but she saw us 
and she was so eager to see us that she broke one 
of the locks on her boots so she had to wear 
slippers down here.

NARRATOR:
Not everybody connected to coalmining in Ukraine is 
as poor as Luba and her family.  Far from it.  The 
collapse of the industry has proved very profitable 
for a small group of businessmen known as the 
Donetzk clan, the Dons some people call them.  From 
what I've gathered there's a very close connection 
between the Dons and certain members of Ukraine's 
political elite.  To find out more, I've come to 
the office of a trade union leader and opposition 
MP, Mikhail Volinyetz.  Now Mikhail you're a bit of 
an expert on this, aren't you?  Who exactly are 
these Dons?

VOLINYETZ [translated]:
These are the Donetzk clans are simply bandits.  
They have actually been killing each other since 
... they now have reached an agreement not to kill 
each other although sometimes they still do but 
they have now become richer and they have the power 
to buy what they need.

He says that these people control the coal market 
of the Ukraine.  They also control almost entirely 
the markets for the coal used by the power plants 
and they control the chain which begins from coal, 
goes to coke and then goes to the steel industry.

NARRATOR:
Can you describe to me exactly how they exploit the 
coal mines because nearly all coal mines in Ukraine 
are still officially under the control of the 
state, aren't they?

VOLINYETZ [translated]:
These people control the energy minister.  They 
also control the coal department chief, they 
control the directors of the mine holding 
companies, directors of individual mines and this 
is how they exercise their control.  They have 
monopolised the right to buy coal from these coal 
mines at artificially low prices.  

NARRATOR:
So are you telling me that this hugely important 
industrial sector is simply being exploited in 
order to provide funds for ruling elite?

VOLINYETZ [translated]:
He says yes that is exactly the case.  And they do 
not want to privatise the coal industry because the 
amount of subsidies that goes into the industry is 
equal in size to the funding received by the 
defence ministry of Ukraine, for instance.

NARRATOR:
If even half of what Mikhail Volinyetz has just 
told us is true, and he is an opposition MP don't 
forget, then it's evidence of a deep seam of 
corruption running right through the Ukrainian 
political system.  I don't know if that might be 
the reason why we've had some difficulty in getting 
the government version.  The key minister, 
reputedly one of the main figures in the Donetzk 
clan, refused to see us but we have finally got an 
appointment so that's why we're in this rather 
echoey government building.  It's with the energy 
minister, Sergei Yerminov.

Minister, thank you for giving us some of your 
time.  Why is it that Ukraine is so far behind in 
terms of restructuring the coal mining industry?

YERMINOV [translated]:
He says any reform on the coal sector involves lots 
of risks.  So many problems have been accumulated 
in the previous years.  Mines have been closed but 
new jobs have not been created.  Huge piles of wage 
arrears have been accumulated and he hopes that 
this government actually has the professional team 
in place which allows us to hope that this reform 
will be successful.

NARRATOR:
Minister, isn't it true to say that any real 
attempt at restructuring is likely to be stifled, 
as it has in the past, by the Donetzk clan?

YERMINOV [translated]:
There is no group and no clan that is plundering 
the coal industry.

NARRATOR:
The way it's been told to me, Minister, is that 
these powerful Donetzk business interests invest in 
the coal mine.  They sell machinery at very high 
rates, they then ensure they have a very cheap 
supply of coal to their steel mills for instance 
which they then sell at a private profit.

YERMINOV [translated]:
This is not a fair way to describe the situation.  
The real problem is that many types of the coal 
equipment in Ukraine are only manufactured by one 
company, the monopolists.  We are trying to address 
this now, he says.

NARRATOR:
Final question, Minister.  Would you accept that 
the failure of successive administrations under 
President Kushmar to grasp the nettle and get down 
to the restructuring of the coal industry is 
responsible for the continued deaths of hundreds of 
miners unnecessarily?

YERMINOV [translated]:
We are doing the best we can to ensure safety so it 
would not be fair at all to say that the Ukrainian 
government is responsible in some way for this high 
mortality.  This is our personal tragedy, a tragedy 
for the whole of Ukraine, and it would not be fair 
to say that it is actually the guilt of any 
specific government of Ukraine.

NARRATOR:
I don't think he liked that line of inquiry very 
much and nor did his press secretary who was 
absolutely fuming at my impertinent questions.  
She's just escorted us very brusquely off the 
premises.  Whatever the real reason for the 
horrific state of Ukraine's coal industry, it seems 
to me that things won't get any better until 
there's more transparency and openness in 
government here, until some real light is let in on 
what's clearly a very dark dangerous and shady 
business.  

[MUSIC]

FEROUKH: 
My name is Feroukh, a middle-aged man from Istanbul 
Turkey working also in States, and the reason I am 
here, I am looking for my soulmate.

NARRATOR:
Feroukh is the kind of middle-aged foreigner we've 
seen in many of the snazzy restaurants that we've 
been into this week.  They're the eager clients of 
one of Ukraine's few booming industries - the mail 
order bride business.

Look up Ukraine on the internet and you're 
bombarded with dozens of websites all offering to 
match up lonely Western males with beautiful hard-
working submissive women - an image of Ukrainian 
womanhood that Feroukh seems to have very much 
bought into.

FEROUKH:
Ukrainian ladies have more family values and are 
more traditional.  They are not so feministic, they 
care about their children.  They make good 
families.

NARRATOR:
Well is that really what Ukrainian women are like? 
 To try to find out, we've invited three women to 
this trendy bar called Stenna.  There's Lena here, 
she's twenty-six years old, she works in a beauty 
salon.  Roxana, who's a philosopher, and Nadia, 
recently back from doing a Masters degree in public 
administration in Colorado.  Nadia, do you 
recognise this stereotype of Ukrainian women?

NADIA:
Yes, I do and I personally think that most things 
that you mentioned are true about Ukrainian women. 
 They are really hard-working and they're able to 
take care of their families successfully, their 
children and their job.  But this is happening I 
think because men basically are doing nothing in 
the families here, not so responsible.  

NARRATOR:
Now Lena, you were actually one of these mail order 
brides.  You went to the United States with a 
potential fiancé for a couple of months.  Is that 
the reason you went, because you don't think much 
of Ukrainian men?

LENA:
I think Ukrainian men really don't care about 
family and I try to find some foreign man but I am 
disappointed with foreign men when I've been in the 
United States because he would like to change me, 
and he want to decide everything for me.

NARRATOR:
He wanted you to be this sort of subservient woman 
that was promised on the website?

LENA:
Yes yes, I think so.  Like toy.  Put in corner and 
then stay here.

NARRATOR:
It still seems to me, Lena, that you don't fully 
fit the stereotype.  What do you think, Roxana?

ROXANA:
Ukrainian women really work hard but still their 
position in the society reflects all crises of our 
society.  They couldn't earn enough money, they 
lose their professions, they lose their jobs.

NARRATOR:
I wanted to ask you about that because how has the 
collapse of the Soviet empire affected the status 
of women, because under the Soviet system it was a 
whole liturgy of gender equality wasn't it?

ROXANA:
We are not completely equal.

NARRATOR:
That was rhetoric?

ROXANA:
Yes, it was image, it was a stereotype but they 
were not completely equal because share of women in 
parliament you know they have to have 15% of women 
and that is all.

NARRATOR:
Now even the rhetoric seems to have gone hasn't it?

ROXANA:
Yes because now only 6% of women in our parliament. 
 Now because of unemployment, because of crisis in 
industries, women are the first who are pushed out 
from the stable professional jobs.

NARRATOR:
Talking about strong women and very capable women, 
but very feminine women as well.

ROXANA:
This is our image of beauty and I know that Eastern 
European women make up their faces but what is 
make-up?  Make-up is a mask, you know.  What is a 
mask, why people use masks?  They use masks to 
protect their ego so what protect, and what hide 
Ukrainian women?  They try to hide their 
strongness, their power because you know when you 
cook, when you take care of children, you're like a 
horse.  I think that very few men in the world 
would like to share their wife with a horse, you 
know.  

[RADIO AD]

NARRATOR:
That is an advertisement that's been going out on 
the local Ukrainian radio station reminding 
listeners that they don't have to put up with 
corrupt officials.  The ad's been put out by a 
campaign group called Partnership for a Transparent 
Society.  It was founded about fifteen months ago 
and it's dedicated to fighting the corruption which 
is endemic in Ukrainian society.  At the end of the 
ad they give out a number, and that's the number 
for one of their citizens' advocacy offices.  It's 
a sort of Citizens Advice Bureau and we've come now 
to one of those advocacy offices.  We're in a 
freezing cold room in the small dying mining town 
of Solidiva.  It's got about thirty thousand 
inhabitants.  The man in charge of the office is 
Boris and Roxana is also here, she also works for 
the Partnership for a Transparent Society.

Roxana, let me ask you first.  Who's taking bribes?

ROXANA:
Basically everyone I would say but the most 
corrupted are professors in the universities, 
public officials and doctors in the hospitals.

NARRATOR:
Boris is the man who's actually in charge here but 
I don't think he speaks English so could you ask, 
do you actually encourage people who come in here 
to go along and confront corrupt officials face to 
face?

BORIS [translated]:
I don't persist and I don't persuade people but I 
encourage them by my own example, showing that it 
is possible to defend your own rights in this 
society.

NARRATOR:
Well people are coming in and out of this room all 
the time.  What about this lady, why have you come 
in?

SVETLANA [translated]:
Svetlana said there are a lot of problems that she 
needs to talk here about and most of those problems 
are about not good services that the state provides 
to its citizens.

NARRATOR:
Well we've now found that Svetlana, in addition to 
her own problems, has got a sister who's fighting 
with the Department of Social Security to get the 
benefits that she's owed.  She's a poor mother with 
children, apparently she should have been getting 
benefits for the past year and it so happens 
they're going along this afternoon to confront some 
official or other in the department and say give us 
our money, so we're going to go along with her and 
see what happens.

Well here we are on the icy steps outside the 
social security office.  A whole group of people 
have come from the Citizens' Advocacy Office to 
support Svetlana and her sister in trying to get 
this benefit money being paid, and here we go.  
Rather dingy corridor.  They're all trooping into 
the office and there's a lady there, deputy 
director of the social security department 
apparently, peering rather suspiciously over her 
golden glasses.

SVETLANA [translated]:
She said that we're here to know when she will be 
able to get money and please explain why it's 
happening, why she is not getting money in time.

NARRATOR:
This is Liana speaking now, what is she saying?

LIANA [translated]:
I have just one question, when I will get my money 
to be able to eat normally with my child.

NARRATOR:
Liana is Svetlana's sister, she's standing here, 
they're both in sort of identikit fur hats standing 
here looking rather glum.  

Svetlana's just kind of pouring through the papers 
that they brought with them now and really 
hammering away at her, at the deputy director 
saying you know why can't you honour what the court 
has ordered?

This is the deputy director speaking, what did she 
say?

DEPUTY DIRECTOR [translated]:
She says that it's not depend on us, it depends on 
the city budget.  As soon as we get money in the 
city budget, we will be able to pay her money.

NARRATOR:
Liana doesn't look very happy with that.

ROXANA:
No she doesn't look happy at all.

NARRATOR:
Well they're shaking hands.  Spacebo!  But I have 
to say that Svetlana who came in with the original 
complaint was looking daggers at the deputy 
director and is clearly not in the slightest bit 
happy.  Svetlana - did you believe her when she 
said the problem is we simply haven't got any 
money?

SVETLANA [translated]:
Nyet!  
Svetlana says that she feels proud of herself 
because she feels that she is able to defend her 
rights.

NARRATOR:
Proud of herself because she's able to defend her 
rights!  Not quite the victory the sisters were 
hoping for but undoubtedly a victory of sorts.  
Just to go in there and confront that 
representative of complacent officialdom, demand 
their rights, that's a huge advance from the 
mindset of the communist past.  It's cheering that 
people here are starting to stand up for themselves 
because they really need to.  The collapse of the 
Soviet empire was supposed to usher in a brave new 
world of freedom, liberal values, private sector 
jobs but for many - especially in the old mining 
areas - what was bad before is now worse.  The 
rudimentary safety net of Soviet times has been 
whipped away, replaced by capitalism in its rawest 
form.  If you're quick or corrupt, you can do very 
well for yourself.  Everybody else simply has to 
survive as best they can.