@roka @somercet he government doesn’t control all the powers in the country any more. Nationalists do whatever they want, oligarchs do whatever they want. The army is weak and is busy with aggroing the East, the police is busy cosplaying with doughnuts, so nobody cares what happens in the rural Ukraine.

West of Ukraine is unique in terms that in the soil there are trunks of ancient trees, all in resin, so there’s more amber than on the shores of Baltic. Peasants don’t know where can they get money, so some oligarch cooperated them into brigades that wash away hectares of soil and find amber. They are protected by cautious guards, that deal with other random people/police/army, eat, sleep and shit in the forest. Or what’s left of the forest, because washing away turns the land into a swamp, where trees won’t be able to grow for centuries.