because of the drop in demand due to the world financial crisis. Meanwhile, in Donetsk new apartment blocks and houses were shooting up to accommodate the new middle class while old Soviet blocks increasingly became the homes of the elderly and the poor. Drugs, AIDS and crime were big issues. Growth was driven in Donetsk by two of the biggest companies in Ukraine, one being Rinat Akhmetov’s System Capital Management, and the other being the Industrial Union of Donbas, dominated by Sergei Taruta, another fabulously rich albeit comparatively minor oligarch.
