However, with such statements, he is trying to hide one of the biggest secrets of the Kremlin. 

"Actually, Donbas was built by NATO, that is, all the leading NATO countries," Dmytro Pirkl claims. 

Dmytro Pirkl is a well-known philanthropist and collector.

One day he was walking through a flea market in Paris.

But by accident I came across mysterious bonds of the nineteenth century with the names of Ukrainian cities. 

"This is Novopavlovka.

Now there are very hot battles going on.

I bought them because I saw the names of Ukrainian cities.

I did not understand what these pieces of paper were.

I came to the Yavornytsky Museum (Dnipropetrovsk National Historical Museum - author's note), showed it - and they were simply shocked." 

The accidentally found documents turned out to be European bonds of Donbas enterprises that had not yet been built at that time.

They did not buy into the widely circulated Soviet myth that the industry of the region was created by the USSR. 

"It is believed that it was the Soviet government that started the rapid development here.

No.

It happened just when European capital came in," says artist from Donetsk Serhiy Zakharov. 

Until the middle of the 19th century, most of Donetsk remained a wild field.

Until deposits of coal and iron ore were found here.

The region immediately became a Klondike for European investors and entrepreneurs.

"If "Donets" was written on the shares, these shares were immediately bought up like hotcakes, - says Dmytro Pirkl.

"This became a marker of success." 

One of the references to the investment fever of that time is this old bridge in the Dnieper, which has survived to this day. 

"This bridge connected Kryvyi Rih ore and Donetsk coal," explains Dmytro Pirkl.

- I once bought a German engraving depicting this bridge.

It shows a moving train and says "Bridge to Europe" in German. 

Oleksandr Melanchenko, regional representative of the Association of Cities of Ukraine, was born and lived all his life in Donbas, in the city of Kostyantynivka.

The Russian occupiers made him a forced immigrant twice:

"When our troops kicked this evil out of my city, I returned home, worked, we started to live a normal life again.

In the 22nd year, he was again forced to leave, to take his family away." 

Oleksandr began to discover the truth about the European history of Donbass only in adulthood:

"At the age of 19, I came to work at the Avtosklo factory.

Some workshops still had Belgian equipment.

I was very impressed!

Later, they dug up the sewer, which was still Belgian.

We didn't even think that sewage pipes could live for so long, even a hundred years." 

Paradoxically, even the glass sarcophagus of Lenin, the founder of the USSR, was made... on Belgian equipment in Kostyantynivka! 

"The Belgians began to build a glass factory, a chemical plant, and a metallurgical plant, Kostyantynivka started with them," says Oleksandr Melanchenko.

"Then I found out that Kramatorsk is the French, Torets is the Germans." 

"If we talk about Mariupol, it's the USA," says Dmytro Pirkl.

- This is a completely unique story.

The plant's equipment was brought by three huge steamships, like the "Titanic" - just so you can imagine the scale.

The Americans did not work for long, they sold it to the French.

But this is already a fact of the presence of American capital, scale, opportunities at that time.

A modern Russian cannot bear this - could such a thing happen at all?!". 

Entrepreneurs from Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, France and the USA have turned the wild steppe into one of the most developed European regions in a few years.

"The Europeans - they did not rush, but very carefully calculated everything and began to deliver the latest technologies here," says Dmytro Pirkl. 

In order to attract workers to the newly created enterprises, housing, hospitals and schools were built for them.

And workers' towns began to form around the factories themselves.

"The settlement becomes a territory where production is built, some conditions for life.

And of course, European standards were also implemented," says artist Serhii Zakharov. 

"At large factories, there were theaters, casinos, parks were broken up.

The atmosphere of a European city was transferred here.

And the people who worked at these enterprises earned quite decent money," says Dmytro Pirkl. 

Settlements founded by Europeans later became the main cities of Donbass.

For example, Donetsk was called Yuzivka until 1924.

In honor of its founder - the Englishman John Hughes. 

Today Shakhtar Donetsk is one of the most famous Ukrainian clubs.

But even football was brought to Donbas by the English.

The European game quickly gained popularity among factory workers, and since 1911 championships were held between Kostyantynivka and Yuzivka. 

There was only one powerful enterprise in the entire Donbas, built with domestic capital - the gigantic Alchev metallurgical plant.

Olena Rofe-Beketova is the great-great-granddaughter of its famous founder, entrepreneur Oleksiy Alchevskyi.

"Aleksii Kyrylovych invested a lot in developing Donetsk.

He had the idea that it should be Ukrainian industry.

The Alchevsky family played a very important role in conveying Ukrainianness." 

The memory of the Ukrainian philanthropist still lives on in Donbas. 

"The local residents really treated him very well," testifies the patron's great-great-grandson.

"And actually, when Oleksiy Danylovych passed away, it was proposed to call the place where his activity began, the city of Alchevsk." 

"In 1919, Moscow issued a decree on the expropriation of all enterprises, capital, and securities.

Everything possible was expropriated.

It was an outright robbery," Dmytro Pirkl is convinced. 

"I know the history of Chasov Yar, when the owner of one of the enterprises remained there as the chief engineer, set up production, gathered students - and still in 1937 he was shot," says Oleksandr Melanchenko.

- The Soviet Union needed to erase the memory of Europe, of the one who built all this on a bare field." 

Rewriting the true history of Donbas, the Bolsheviks renamed the cities named after Europeans after communist leaders.

Then Donetsk became Stalin instead of Yuzivka. 

"I always wondered why the city's birthday is 1870, but for some reason its history has been told to us since the 20s of the 20th century," recalls Oleksandr Melanchenko.

"They said they were fighting the exploiters." 

During the Soviet rule, the progressive industry of Donbas gradually degraded. 

"We will, of course, rebuild everything," Oleksandr Melanchenko is confident.

- Not they, but we will rebuild our European Donetsk region.

And it will be 100%.

I am sure of that." 

"We have gone through everything, we have only victory, only liberation, - says the artist Serhiy Zakharov.

"And this will be a new, better, free Donbas."