Kyiv, Ukraine – In November 2023, representatives of two Chinese companies signed a deal to supply stone-crushing machinery for construction projects.Despite being inked in Moscow, the contract was not made with a sovereign nation. It was announced by Evgeny Solntsev, then the “prime minister” of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk”, a resource-rich, war-ravaged statelet carved out of southeastern Ukraine by Russia-backed separatists in 2014.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list“I’m confident that the potential of our cooperation is huge, and we’re only beginning to implement it,” Solntsev wrote on his Telegram channel. The post included photos of four Chinese representatives standing next to separatist officials and the flags of China, Russia and the “People’s Republic of Donetsk”.The companies – identified as Zhongxin Heavy Industrial Machinery and Amma Construction Machinery – supplied equipment to the Karansky quarry in the southern Donetsk region. The crushed stone has been used for construction projects in Russia-occupied areas in Ukraine.One of the busiest construction sites is the Azov Sea port of Mariupol, where dozens of buildings are reported to have been erected on top of mass graves of thousands of civilians killed during the city’s siege in early 2022.Zhongxin Heavy Industrial Machinery did not reply to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.Amma Construction Machinery is harder to identify. Its website lists a phone number in the Russian city of Irkutsk in southern Siberia and a link to the website of Bark, a company that specialises in eq …
