A coal mine in Torez, a village near the Russian border in the Donbas region around Donetsk.
A large number of coal mines in the Donetsk region have shut down in the last decades. Many residents who were working in the mining industry are now unemployed. Lots of people move to Russia to work there. As a result, life in many of the settlements around disfunctional mines like these has come to halt. Many villages are largely abandoned.
The Donets Basin (Donbas) region is the centre of Ukraine's coal mining and steel industry. The Donbas region used to be the power base of Viktor Yanukovych, the now deposed former president, who has fled to Russia where he is being supported by the Russian government as the rightful head of state of Ukraine.
Lately Pro-russian protests in the eastern part of the country are calling for greater autonomy from Kiev and a referendum on secession from the western part of the country.