Ukrainians Mourn Mine Blast Fatalities

Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma on Wednesday paid tribute to miners killed in a methane gas explosion earlier this week and pledged that the government would pay more attention to safety in coal mining.

“Ukraine is in mourning today,” Kuchma told relatives and friends of those killed. “Together with you, all Ukrainian people, to whom these miners brought heating and electricity, are in grief.”

He bowed his head toward coffins containing the remains of 16 miners who were buried later at Shcheglovskoye cemetery, near the Zasyadko mine where they died Monday. The blast, 3,500 feet below ground, killed 39 miners.

Flags draped with black ribbons were at half-mast across the nation of 50 million. In Donetsk, local television broadcast only news and classical music. All shows at local theaters and cinemas in this industrial town had been canceled.

Experts differ on what caused the accident at Zasyadko, considered to be one of Ukraine’s more modern mines.

The blast was one of the deadliest mine disasters in more than a year in Ukraine, where safety measures have taken a back seat to survival since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Kuchma said the tragedy should be generally viewed as a warning that safety standards in the troubled and underfinanced industry left much to be desired.

“Moral duty to the dead obliges all of us to pay more attention to this vital industry and to its workers and to take care for the safety of their labor,” he said.

According to official data, 358 Ukrainian miners lost their lives in accidents last year. Up until Monday’s blast, about 80 had died since the start of the year. A gas explosion at the nearby Skochinsky pit killed 63 miners in April last year.

Monday’s tragedy at Zasyadko also has a political aspect for Kuchma because the workers at the mine were among the first in Ukraine to hold a support rally and nominate him as presidential candidate two weeks ago.

Kuchma was scheduled to visit Donetsk as part of his campaign for the presidential election due in October. Instead, a somber Kuchma visited the mine and a hospital where some of the 48 miners injured in the accident were being treated for severe burns.

Presidential spokesman Olexander Martynenko said Kuchma would make his planned campaign trip to Donetsk in June.