Product Code Database
The Donetsk Clan (; ), also called the Donetsk mafia, the Donetsk Family, or simply "The Family", was a group of Ukrainian oligarchs and members of the Ukrainian mafia active between the late Soviet period and the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, when the clan collapsed. Emerging from the nomenklatura of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, the Donetsk Clan formed one of the three main groupings of oligarchs during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, alongside Viktor Medvedchuk's Kyiv Seven and Kuchma's own Dnipropetrovsk Mafia. In Kuchma's second term, the clan outplayed the other two groups, leading to the political rise of Viktor Yanukovych. Following Yanukovych's fall from power, the Donetsk Clan dissolved, though its members remained prominent in Ukraine.
With the large population of prisoners, Soviet prison culture was exported to the Donbas. By the time of Perestroika, this had grown to a general distrust of the law and the cultural dominance of criminal groups in the Donbas. Combined with a lack of established laws and taxes on businesses, along with a general economic slump, and the closure of unprofitable mines by the Ukrainian government, a "Ukrainian Rust Belt" came into being in the Donbas, and crime rose sharply.
Following Bragin's death, fellow Donetsk businessman Rinat Akhmetov took over his businesses and further expanded on them. He joined forces with Viktor Yanukovych, Governor of Donetsk Oblast and himself a former violent criminal who was willing to forge an alliance with Akhmetov's FC Shakhtar Donetsk. Between 1994 and 2004, the Donetsk Clan consumed its opponents, assuming economic control over the Donbas. However, the clan was also focused on politics, and mobilised local residents against the Communist Party of Ukraine beginning in the late 1990s. Using government resources controlled as a result of state capture, the clan organised the Party of Regions as an alternative to the Communist Party, resulting in the party entering the Ukrainian government in 2002. The clan also expanded eastwards into Luhansk, effectively taking over the city's underworld after the murder of Luhansk mobster in 1997.
In 2002, Yanukovych was appointed as Prime Minister of Ukraine by President Leonid Kuchma. The move was widely seen as a victory for Akhmetov, and in Yanukovych's campaign in the 2004 presidential election, Akhmetov lent his support. However, after Yanukovych turned to Russian president Vladimir Putin and electoral fraud in an effort to defeat opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, the Orange Revolution successfully contested the election's legitimacy, and helped ensure Yushchenko's election. After Yushchenko took office, he began targeting the Donetsk Clan. Akhmetov in particular was a victim of anti-oligarch measures, and he fled to Monaco to avoid prosecution for illegally obtaining his assets. He would later return to campaign on Yanukovych's behalf.
The corruption of the Donetsk clan was a prime target of the 2013–2014 Euromaidan protests, and the clan's other two leaders, Firtash and Akhmetov, ultimately played a pivotal role in ousting Yanukovych from office. Following the Revolution of Dignity, the clan entered into an agreement with pro-Russian gas executives, forming the Opposition Bloc. However, the clan's political influence was severely weakened after the city of Donetsk was captured by the separatist Donetsk People's Republic during the War in Donbas, and the clan, along with the Kyiv Seven, proved unable to survive.
|
|
