Following World War II, the Donbas region, and in particular the city of Donetsk, faced wide-reaching urbanisation and immigration from throughout the Soviet Union.

Further increasing the city's population was the Gulag camps located nearby, and these individuals entered organised crime after the completion of their prison sentences.

Sergey Pryjmachuk, Sloviansk chief of police from 1994 to 1998, said in 2006, "Criminals took advantage of the fact that recently released prisoners were not in a hurry to leave the Donetsk region as long as people had money.

By the time of Perestroika, this had grown to a general distrust of the law and the cultural dominance of criminal groups in the Donbas.

However, the clan was also focused on politics, and mobilised local residents against the Communist Party of Ukraine beginning in the late 1990s.

[8] Following the Revolution of Dignity, the clan entered into an agreement with pro-Russian gas executives, forming the Opposition Bloc.