Not a drop to drink Facing growing water shortages, civilians in occupied eastern Ukraine appeal to Putin for disaster relief
Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the war Moscow unleashed in Donbas have severed these regions from crucial water infrastructure, creating acute shortages for residents and industry. This crisis has only grown worse since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The city of Donetsk has endured three years of water scarcity, despite the construction of a new canal developed under former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, who was later jailed for corruption. Water is rationed according to a schedule, arrives dirty, and frequently fails to reach the upper floors of buildings, even during designated supply hours.
Last week, authorities in the self-declared, Russian-annexed Donetsk People’s Republic announced that water rationing would intensify. Distribution had been every two days; now it will be every three days. About an hour outside Donetsk, the city of Yenakiieve now receives water service only once every four days, and shortages are even worse in the surrounding villages. The restrictions have provoked outrage from residents, which pro-invasion bloggers have amplified on social media. Both groups criticize the region’s officials for corruption and negligence. Meanwhile, DNR head Denis Pushilin acknowledges that the Donbas water crisis cannot be resolved until Russia captures the city of Sloviansk.
An open letter to Vladimir Putin, signed by “the residents of Donetsk and the Donetsk People’s Republic,” calls the region’s ongoing water shortages a “humanitarian and ecological catastrophe.” On paper, individuals are allotted an ample 330 liters (more than 87 gallons) per day, but water is only available for four hours in the evening on distribution days, and it’s impossible for most people to collect even a fraction of this supply in that time.
Locals complain that their high water bills are especially outrageous given the poor service quality. When the supply is briefly reactivated, the pressure is too low to reach beyond the lowest floors in the city’s apartment high-rises. Those lucky enough to get anything out of their taps are rewarded with a filthy, orange-stained fluid. In buildings without elevators, mothers with small children, people with disabilities, and the elderly must manage heavy buckets up flights of stairs.
For drinking water purchased in a store or from a vending machine, people living in Donetsk pay 5 rubles per liter (roughly 20¢ per gallon). In relatively nearby cities like Mariupol and Rostov, bottled water retails for half that price.
On his Telegram channel, former Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleg Tsaryov claimed that some in Donetsk have begun lining their toilet bowls with kulechki (small bags) to catch excrement, in order to conserve the water that would otherwise be used for flushing. One of the leaders of the Donbas separatist movement in 2014, Tsaryov now looks at the city’s living standards in horror: “Donetsk — once a city of roses, a model city — has changed. This tragedy has endured for a decade.”
The industrial sector is also suffering. At the Zuevskaya thermal plant, which powers at least a third of the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” water levels in the cooling pond have fallen to critical lows, threatening a shutdown that could impact numerous enterprises. In the town of Rozovka, for example, large numbers of birds died at a poultry farm after its water supply was cut by two-thirds.
Despite the water shortages, Donetsk continues to strain its supply by building new residential complexes, operating city fountains, and even staging public water shows.
“It’s not just absurd; it’s insulting,” says the letter to Russia’s president. The authors also lay out a series of demands: Putin’s personal oversight of the water crisis, an investigation into local graft and negligence, a declaration of a state of emergency, an immediate overhaul of the water infrastructure, a second water line for the region, lower prices, and new regulations to ensure transparency and fairness.
The letter to Putin has garnered the attention of several popular pro-invasion bloggers, including the Telegram “Z-channels” Voenkor Kotenok (with 360,000 followers) and Sinyaya Z Boroda (with 114,000 followers). Yury Kotenok, who runs the former channel, described the situation in Donetsk as “total chaos” and “unthinkable savagery,” arguing that the city’s living conditions are worse now than before the full-scale invasion. “These people waited eight years to become part of Russia and endured Ukrainian bombings,” Kotenok wrote.
Russian propagandist Anastasiya Kashevarova has criticized officials in both Donetsk and Luhansk for incompetence, describing their response to the water crisis as “amorphous.” “The water companies don’t fix the pipes or deliver the water,” she said. “They just raise the rates on water that’s not even there. And if it does come out, it’s full of rust.” On her blog, Kashevarova called on leaders in the Donbas to “establish a water supply headquarters, contact the federal government, bring in specialists, and freeze housing costs and retail prices.”
How the water dried up
Today’s water supply problems in southern and eastern Ukraine originate from Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which prompted Ukraine to block the North Crimean Canal, a key source of water for the peninsula. The canal was restored following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, but the system failed in 2023 with the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Plant Dam.
Like Crimea, Russia’s two proxy statelets in Ukraine’s Donbas faced water shortages after 2014, but the scarcity was more severe in Luhansk than Donetsk. The pro-Moscow publication UkrainaRu claims that Kyiv refrained from a “water blockade” against the “Donetsk People’s Republic” to avoid disrupting water delivery to the cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha, which Russia had not yet captured.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the Donetsk region’s primary water source — the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas Canal — remained under Ukrainian control. After February 2022, the canal’s water levels plunged. By November 2022, water flow into municipal networks had fallen by 80 percent compared to January levels, according to UkrainaRu.
In 2023, Russia built the Don-Donbas Pipeline in just four months, channeling water from the Don River to replenish the depleted Siverskyi Donets-Donbas Canal. Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov supervised the construction before being convicted of bribery charges two years later. Prior to sentencing, prosecutors filed a second case against Ivanov for allegedly accepting 152 million rubles ($1.9 million) from the director of Olimpsitistroy, a construction firm contracted for the Don-Donbas project.
Even during construction, assessments indicated the pipeline would not meet the region’s water needs. “That pipeline they’ve launched from the Don is basically like tipping a teaspoon of water into a cauldron of borscht. It’s not going to save anything, just help out a few cities a tiny bit,” a former executive at the water utility Voda Donbassa told Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian service in May 2023. According to data from Voda Donbassa, the new pipeline meets at most 45 percent of the region’s need for fresh water.
The leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, does not hide the fact that the Don-Donbas Pipeline is only a stopgap solution. Since 2022, Pushilin has openly stated that the region’s water supply problem will be fully resolved only once the Russian army captures the city of Sloviansk, which houses the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas Canal’s key infrastructure.
Adapted for Meduza in English by Kevin Rothrock