Hughesdorf is a satellite settlement to the coal mines of the Donets Basin. If the miners of the region do not live in tottering portable barracks close to an open mine shaft, corralled and mushed by rifle-sporting Soldaten, they live in one of Hughesdorf's skeletal outer suburbs. Going into the city center, perhaps to pick up groceries or firewood, they walk past wide open fields that were once whole city blocks. The map is like an asteroid belt — untethered pockets of settlement form a ring around the central district, the only complete and uniform place in the mutilated city.

The city center was rebuilt with coal production in mind. Tool shops pock the main roads, factories spit out black smoke and rock drills, wide ships and enslaved dockworkers drag articulated haulers onto land. However, these machines have not eliminated the use of pickaxes and corfs, quarry tubs, hard wire hutches, and heavy mattocks in the mines. The governing authorities of Reichskommissariat Ukraine are very deliberate in who they provide the newest equipment. The governing authorities of Reichskommissariat Moskowien are invested in the economic success of the city only insofar as it secures a steady coal supply. That the current arrangement murders Ukrainians and Russians by the hour is a welcome and deliberate feature of Hughesdorf's new economic architecture.