“Coal” Blooded Murder

By Walter Kish

This past weekend brought news of yet another coal mining disaster in Ukraine’s Donbas region.  At time of print at least ninety miners are confirmed dead, twenty eight are in hospital and another thirty are still missing, with little hope of them being rescued alive.  The accident took place at the Zasyadko mine near Donetsk early Sunday morning when a massive methane gas explosion ripped through the colliery’s lower levels. 

Zasyadko, one of the largest coal mines in Ukraine, has had a troubled past, with fatal accidents almost an annual tradition.  In 2006, 13 workers died in a similar explosion, while 54 died in 2001 and 50 in 1999.  All were caused by explosions of methane gas, a hazard common to coal mines everywhere, but especially prevalent in Ukraine.  The amount of methane gas in a coal mine increases with the depth of the mine as does its pressure, and Ukrainian coal mines are some of the deepest in the world.  Where most of the coal mines in the rest of Europe average five to six hundred metres in depth, a large proportion of those in Ukraine reach depths in excess of a thousand metres.  This latest Zasyadko accident took place more than a thousand metres underground.  Undoubtedly, it will set the dubious record of most fatalities, the previous being eighty miners killed at a coal mine near Luhansk in the Year 2000. 

So far this year, some one hundred and fifty miners have died in Ukraine’s coal mines, with another six thousand injured.  Ukrainian mines hold the dubious distinction of being amongst the most unsafe in the world, with only the Chinese owning a worse record.

Prime Minister Yanukovich rushed to the site right after the disaster became known and issued a statement that, although a thorough investigation will be made, it was essentially an accident of “nature”.  The insensitivity and hypocrisy of this is galling in view of the fact that having been raised in the Donetsk area and having served as its Governor, he is undoubtedly aware that most of the region’s mines are old, obsolete, poorly equipped, poorly maintained and operated with a wanton disregard for the safety of the workers.  Most should have been shut down a long time ago, except for the fact that heavy government subsidies have been keeping them afloat. 

The inefficiency of Ukraine’s coal mining industry is notorious.  A World Bank study in the late nineties determined that the average Ukrainian coal miner produced on average, 100 tons of coal per year.  The corresponding figure for Russia was 200 tons, 400 tons for Poland, 2,000 tons for the UK and 4,000 tons for North American mines. 

Although the Ukrainian government has made big noises over the past decade about shutting down unprofitable and obsolete mines, and investing significant amounts in modernizing those with competitive potential, very little of significance has been accomplished.  Unsafe mines continue to operate and miners keep getting killed because the Donetsk clan of oligarchs that control the mining industry there continue to convert this black rock into “coal” hard cash.  Mine managers are pressured into increasing production far above what most mines can do safely with the resources and equipment that they have.  The consequences are both predictable and tragic.  More than four thousand coal miners have died in Ukraine since 1991, and independent industry experts have often claimed that this is due to nothing more than criminal negligence.  It is no accident that most of the coal and downstream coke production in Ukraine is controlled by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest billionaire oligarch.

The obvious question most people outside of Ukraine ask is why do Ukrainian coal miners continue to go underground if the work is so dangerous? The simple answer is they have no other choice.  The Donbas industrial region has had a severe unemployment problem every since the break-up of the Soviet Union caused the closure of many of its huge factories and plants.  There are few other employment options, and with mines offering wages that are three times the average Ukrainian rate, many miners would rather take the risk than live in destitution. 

It is a risk though that should not have to be made in an age when safer technology and alternatives exist.  Obviously neither the Ukrainian government nor the industry owners place a lot of value on the lives of the average Donetsk coal miner.  To me it seems little more than “coal” blooded murder.