This paper compares politics in two cities, Mariupol and Kramatorsk, located near the frontline between Ukraine-controlled Donetsk Oblast and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR). The DPR controlled these cities in the spring of 2014, but Ukraine recaptured them. Both cities are company towns, in which owners/managers of dominant factories, nicknamed job-givers, have a decisive voice in the city's decision-making. This paper compares how leaders of the two cities reacted to the expansion of Rinat Akhmetov's business empire before the Donbas War, and to DPR paramilitaries during the war. The two cities diverged decisively in the post-war reconstruction because Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko succeeded in splitting two major companies and making one of them pro-presidential in Kramatorsk. As a result, electoral politics in Kramatorsk became highly competitive, while one-party dominance of the Opposition Bloc (former Party of Regions) continues in Mariupol.

Recent results of radiocarbon analyses from sites in Ukraine suggest that a revision of the chronology of the Late mesolithic and early Neolithic is required. The subsequent Neolithic period up to the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (c.3000 cal BC) should be divided into two separate periods, the Neolithic and Neo-eneolithic.