GEODYNAMICS

The periodicity, dynamics and kinematics of unadequately studied Cenozoic activities in the Donets intraplate foldbelt (“the Donbass”) and in its neighbourhood were considered. It have been demonstrated that two independent orogenies divided by a tectonic pause in the Eocene-Oligocene took places there, the Laramic one (the terminal Maestrichtian – Paleocene) of an early Alpine tectonic epochs and conventiolly neotectonic one (Early Miocene – Quaternary) of a late Alpine epoch. The both orogenies proceeded at submeridional compression and sublatitudinal extension, but essentially differed in their areas and a style of structure. The first of them occurred immediately to the west of the Donbass where it caused horisontal compression of salt diapirs in Dnieper-Donets aulacogen whereas the second formed Donets-North Azov neotectonic megaswell and caused a dextral shear along border Severodonets and Persianoff upthrusts of the Donbass. Results of analysis carried in the article allowed associating the second orogeny with the simoultaneous Greater Caucasian orogenesis. A nature of moderate the Laramic movements can be explained by the known intraplate activization of Western and partially Eastern Europe as a result of Africa-Eurasia collision at modern Alps, Dinarides and Pont as well as contemporal spreading onset in Northern Atlantic-Arctic which produced an opposite pressure from the north. A common results of both processes were inversion and compression of a number of the european aulacogens including the Dnieper-Donets one.