Ukraine troops surround Donetsk, rebel leader says

[Igel]

4. Two towns are periodically referred to as "humanitarian catastrophes."

One is Luhans'k, where it's pretty dismal. There's one power plant for a large area, mostly because during an attack rebels managed to hit a transformation station that linked the Luhans'k grid to the rest of Ukraine. It'll take a while to fix it. That one power plant had a railroad bridge necessary for supplying it with coal taken out (the LPR folk proudly claimed as part of a series of "bridge falls&quot but it'll hold for a few more weeks. Cell phone service is out, food's available but not abundant.

Donets'k is the other city. Here's downtown Donets'k as of Aug. 9. http://novosti.dn.ua/details/231859/ Lots of photos. The text says that in some areas there's a power outage, something like 100 "dom" and in another area 4000 people. A "dom" is basically an apartment or condo building that's maybe 4 floors high, maybe 15 or 18. Usually the ground floor has small shops or businesses in it. Converting from "dom" or "building" to population isn't something I know how to do, the average varies from city to city.

Novosti Donbassa "News of the Donbas" is based in Donets'k, the regional center. They're "liberal" in some ways, not pro-DPR by any stretch, but are perfectly happy to criticize Poroshenko and the Ukr government.