In what the pro-Russian separatists call “an act of genocide,” Ukraine’s President Poroshenko signed a decree Friday that will explicitly withdraw state support for the regions within a month. While appearing to implicitly recognize the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as autonomous, the decree means that the central bank will no longer service bank accounts, prisoners will be transferred (inmates with minor offences will be released), and perhaps most troubling as the cold winter begins, the order covers all public services, including crucial ones, such as schools, hospitals, and emergency services; and local heating and power plants will be subject to new laws that could involve cutting energy supplies altogether to the plants that don’t pay. Luhansk’s leader exclaimed, “the total socio-economic blockade of Donbass is de facto an act on genocide and devastation of our people,” and as the images below show, bank runs have already begun across the region with long lines forming at ATMs.
This is a job for Putin, dun de dun