“They never expected Mariupol to resist.” Locals shocked by Russia’s relentless attack on huge steel factory protecting Ukrainians

Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Holding which owns the factory, is devastated by what he sees happening to the factory and Mariupol.

“The city has been literally under siege for almost two months now. And the Russians, they won’t allow us to bring food or water into the city,” Ryzhenkov says.

“They don’t allow us to take the civilians out of the city in a centralized way. They let people either leave in their own cars or even walk through the minefields on foot. It’s a humanitarian disaster there.”

When asked why Russian President Vladimir Putin is so eager to get Azovstal, Ryzhenkov told DailyExpertNews, “I don’t think it’s the plant he wants.”

“I think it’s about the symbolism that they wanted to conquer Mariupol. They never expected Mariupol to resist.”

At least 150 workers have died and thousands remain missing, he says.

“What we know is that of the 11,000 workers at Azovstal,” says Ryzhenkov, “only about 4,500 people came from Mariupol and contacted us so we know where they are.”

He seems haunted by the fate of Azovstal’s staff.

“Over the past two months, the entire company has done everything possible to get people to safety. Unfortunately, we are not even halfway there yet.”

The company’s workforce is made up of family dynasties that have been making steel for as long as they can remember.

Ivan Goltvenko, a 38-year-old factory personnel director, is the third generation of his family to work at Azovstal.

“I hoped that I would work for Azovstal all my life and contribute a lot to the material and to my city,” he says sadly.

“It’s terrible to see your city being destroyed. You could compare it to a family member dying in your arms…

From the city of Zaphorizhzhia, he finds it difficult to contemplate the extent of the destruction wrought by Russian air raids “because you want your city to remain the same as in your memory.”

News of what’s happening at home is seeping through from friends and colleagues still trapped in Mariupol.

“For example, today I was shown a video of my apartment. Despite the house surviving, my flat has been completely looted by Russian soldiers. There is nothing valuable left – they even rummaged through the children’s toys, and many of them were stolen.”

He says he spoke to a colleague on April 24 who revealed some of the horrors residents face.

“We know from one of the associates, who has a connection, that he is in the city, that he failed to leave and that he was involved in clearing rubble and transporting the bodies of dead civilians,” says Goltvenko.

“And yesterday he told me that for one day, from just one district of the city, I would say ‘just one street’, he loaded four trucks with corpses.

“He said, ‘I was drawn to volunteering at the morgue picking up bodies in the city and taking them away.'”

“Before that,” says Goltvenko, “he gets a dry ration.”

His colleague, 49-year-old Oleksiy Ehorov, deputy chief of repairs, has lived in Mariupol since childhood.

“I studied there, I started working there, that’s where I became the person I am today. And seeing how it was destroyed… You can’t tell it without tears, without a lump in your throat,” he says. .

The pain is not over. Russian fighter jets and missiles continue to shell the site, despite Putin last week saying there was no need to storm the industrial area around the factory.

Azovstal’s defenders have repeatedly refused to give up their weapons. There would still be hundreds of soldiers and civilians in the factory.

Before the war

What happened in Azovstal is a mirror image of what happened to a city that is proud of its history and industrial heritage.

The industrial port city may never have been conventionally beautiful, with chimneys expelling smoke and steam into the air above the factory. In the harbor, blue and yellow cranes moved heavy objects across the bustling shipyard. But Mariupol had its charm and was loved by the residents.

Major improvements had been made in recent years, green spaces were developed and the quality of life of working-class communities finally improved.

“Over the past eight years, we’ve built a modern and comfortable city there… a good city to live in,” says Ryzhenkov.

“We’ve completed some major environmental projects and there were still plans to make sure we have clean air, we have clean water, and so on. And now we’re seeing everything being destroyed in less than two months.”

Maryna Holovnova, 28, says “it was like a living dream” because “we had worked to transform the city from an ordinary industrial town into a cultural capital.”

The Mariupol native returned in 2020 after a 10-year absence to find a burgeoning social scene. “It was completely different,” she tells DailyExpertNews, proudly adding that it was even named Ukraine’s Capital of Culture last year by the Ministry of Culture.

“We had so many festivals and so many people came from other cities and also from other countries,” she continues. “We had the opportunity to tell the people about the city, not only from an industrial development perspective, but also from a cultural point of view [and] from a historical point of view – because Mariupol has an amazing history.”

A beaming smile appears on her face as the former city guide remembers the route she would take visitors. It would start at Mariupol’s centuries-old water tower, she says, before winding through the city center, past the many historic buildings and sites associated with homegrown personalities.

Holovnova says that as the waterfront metropolis continues to thrive, a sailing tour was introduced last year and there were plans to launch an industrial-themed excursion complete with a factory tour showing the process of steelmaking.

“One of my favorite places, which was weird because the locals wouldn’t understand me … was an observation point from where you could see the whole Azovstal factory and you could see how big it was, how huge it was, how amazing it had been,” she says. “It was nothing special for the locals, because we get used to it, but all the foreigners, people from other cities, were amazed by the view.”

City under siege

Mariupol’s flourishing was an unlikely story, as it was swallowed up by the violence of the 20th century. It was the scene of bitter fighting in World War II.

This time the devastation is even greater. Ukrainian officials say less than 20% of the city’s buildings are undamaged. Russia’s relentless bombing has left rubble where monuments such as the Drama Theater once stood. Ukrainian officials say about 300 of an estimated 1,300 civilians who had sought refuge at the cultural institution were killed when it was bombed in a brutal attack by Russia on March 16.

The same goes for Azovstal. Built in 1933 under Soviet rule, it was partially demolished during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s before being rebuilt.

Now it’s gone again — the carcass harbors Ukrainian soldiers and about 1,000 civilians in a maze of underground chambers, according to Ukrainian officials.

An estimated 100,000 people live in the city. On Thursday, local authorities warned that Mariupol is vulnerable to epidemics, given the appalling sanitary conditions in much of the city and the fact that perhaps thousands of bodies have not been collected.

Oleksiy Ehorov does not want to think about what happened to his city and his family. His mother-in-law died of gunfire during their first attempt to flee to Zaporizhzhya.

“My emotions already disappeared there in Mariupol. That’s why there is nothing but hatred,” he told DailyExpertNews.

Ehorov says he loved living by the sea and had hoped to stay in the steel mill until he retired.

Now he can only watch as Russia continues to blockade the city and his former workplace.

When asked if he would work among the Russians if they took over the factory, he echoes Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and the main shareholder of the group behind Azovstal steel.

‘New. I’m not going to do that. After what they did… never.”