" Ukraine needed new owners and a new class of managers to revive its economy. The country got both in a group of young, ambitious, and ruthless businessmen who had no roots in the old planned economy of Soviet times and had made their way up from the economic chaos of the perestroika years and mafia wars of the 1990s. Known in Ukraine, as in Russia, as oligarchs, they emerged as the main beneficiaries of the second stage of privatization, which amounted to the sale of government assets at a fraction of their actual value. The oligarchs made their fortunes by being innovative and opportunistic, but also by ingratiating, bribing, and shooting their way into the offices of the “red directors.” With the military-industrial complex in steep decline, the Ukrainian metallurgical industry became the richest prize in the 1990s and early 2000s. At that time, more than half the country’s industrial output came from four eastern oblasts—Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk—that were rich in iron ore and coal and produced Ukraine’s primary export product: steel. "

― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine