# Who Fed Whom: The Myth of Russian 'Subsidies'

> The Kremlin myth that 'Russia fed Ukraine' inverts reality: in the USSR resources flowed out of Ukraine to the centre — from the Dashava gas that heated Moscow from 1951, to coal, ore and grain.

Canonical: https://holospravdy.com/en/who-fed-whom
Period: suchasnist | Type: spoke | Updated: 2026-07-17

**TL;DR.** "Russia fed and subsidised Ukraine, and you are ungrateful" is one of the Kremlin's favourite claims. It inverts reality. In the Soviet Union, resources flowed **not into Ukraine but out of it**: Dashava gas heated Moscow from the early 1950s — **two decades before** the Siberian fields — the Donbas supplied coal, Kryvyi Rih supplied ore, and overall about **a fifth of the republic's national income** was pumped out to develop other parts of the USSR. The present-day mirror is telling too: it is not the "ungrateful" periphery that lives on federal subsidies, but the North Caucasus. The question "who fed whom" has a very definite answer — and it is not in the metropole's favour.

## The myth

The claim comes in two forms — historical and everyday. The historical: that a backward, agrarian Ukraine sat for centuries on Russia's neck while Russia built it factories, power stations and cities. The everyday one, familiar from late-Soviet kitchens and today's talk shows: "we fed you," "stop feeding" the ungrateful republics. Both versions serve one idea: without Moscow, Ukraine is unviable, and therefore has no right to be separate.

## Gas: Dashava fed Moscow

The myth is most easily broken with the example of gas. The USSR's industrial gas sector was born **not in Siberia but in Galicia**. In **October 1948** the **Dashava–Kyiv** trunk pipeline came into operation, **509.6 km** long — at the time **the most powerful in Europe** (about 2 billion m³/year)[1]. As early as **August 1949**, Stalin ordered the pipe to be extended further, and in the early 1950s **Dashava (Ukrainian) gas began heating Moscow**[1]. Right up to **1966** the Russian capital was fed by gas from western Ukraine — **two decades before** the large fields of Western Siberia came on line[1].

So in the first post-war decades it was not Russia that "gave" Ukraine gas, but the reverse — **Ukrainian gas heated Moscow**[1]. This is exactly the detail with which the street historian Vitaliy Dribnytsia trips up his opponent: when the man repeats the rote line "Russia fed us," it is enough to ask whose gas heated the Soviet capital in the 1950s[1].

## Coal, ore, grain: Ukraine the donor

Gas is only one component. In the Russian Empire and the USSR it was Ukraine that was the industrial "heart": **in 1913 the Donets Basin produced about 87%** of the entire empire's coal, and later up to half of the USSR's coking coal. Kryvyi Rih supplied iron ore, the Dnipro region supplied metal, and the black-earth belt supplied grain and sugar.

These resources did not stay in the republic. By Britannica's estimate, the centrally directed transfer of wealth out of Ukraine reached **a fifth of its national income** — and went to the economic development of other parts of the Union, above all Russia and Kazakhstan. In other words, within the Soviet system Ukraine was a **net donor**, not a subsidised dependent. The most tragic side of this "feeding" was the [Holodomor of 1932–33](/en/holodomor-shtuchnyy-holod), when grain was carried out of a starving Ukraine — including for export.

## The mirror today: who really subsidises whom

The myth is best refuted by the present. The slogan "stop feeding the Caucasus," which flared up at Russian rallies, did not appear out of nowhere: today **Chechnya's budget is more than 80% funded by federal transfers**, and these regions' dependence on the centre's subsidies is only growing. That is, the real direction of the money flow within the empire runs **from the centre to a loyal periphery** that has to be held, not from a "breadwinner Russia" to "ungrateful" outskirts. Ukraine, which was a donor, was bypassed by this scheme — because it was held not by money but by coercion.

## Political, not economic colonialism

Here it is important not to fall into the opposite extreme. Russian colonialism was not primarily an economic enterprise like the British one — its main driver was **power and prestige**, not mercantile profit (see [the article "Was Ukraine a Colony of Russia"](/en/ukrayina-koloniya-rosiyi)). But it in no way follows from this that the metropole "fed" anyone. On the contrary: a political empire held its colonised lands by force — through russification, deportations, an artificial famine — and, on top of that, **also pumped resources out of them**[2]. The "we fed you" myth is an attempt to pass off exploitation as charity.

## Why this matters

"Who fed whom" is not a bookkeeping dispute but a political argument. The thesis of a "subsidised" Ukraine serves the central imperial conclusion: that the country cannot survive on its own, and so its place is under Moscow. Turn the flows the right way round — the gas from Dashava, the coal of the Donbas, the grain of the black earth, the fifth of the national income that went "upward" for years — and the argument falls apart. Russia did not feed Ukraine; Ukraine was for decades one of the resource pillars on which the whole Soviet — and before it the imperial — economy rested.

## Citation sources

[1] summary: «Москва питалась украинским газом ещё в сороковых-пятидесятых годах — газопровод из Дашавы, а тюменский газ появился только в семидесятых. Так кто кого кормил?» — Dim and funny: who fed whom in the empire (29.06.2022) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A355826ll8k (timecodes: 16:20, 17:05)

[2] summary: ««Российская империя не имела колоний, а кормила окраины» — это переворот. Бывают и континентальные колонии; и если утверждаешь, что Россия кормила Украину, то докажи это — расскажи, как именно, а не наоборот.» — Dim and funny: who fed whom in the empire (29.06.2022) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A355826ll8k (timecodes: 11:30, 13:30, 17:40)