DONETSK, Ukraine—Deep in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on Ukraine’s eastern fringe, crumbling statues of Lenin were guarding a century-old coal mine, testifying to a former master who had begun encroaching again. A high-pitched bell sounded, signaling the end of the night shift, and a precarious cage brought exhausted, soot-faced workers to the surface. The sudden glare of daylight made the miners squint. “These men are finally working honestly,” the mine’s chief engineer, Andrei Popovchenko, told me. “Under Ukraine, things were corrupt and illegal. Taxes were stolen.” We were walking around the Udarnik mine in Snizhne, which lies east of the city of Donetsk, close to the Russian border.
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