Lviv, Ukraine — Few outside the metals industry had heard of Mariupol’s Azovstal Steel and Iron Works before it became the scene of a desperate last stand against Russia’s invading forces.
But for weeks the world has been raging around the steel works on the coast of the Azov Sea.
Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Holding, which owns the plant, is devastated by what he sees happening to the plant and Mariupol.
“The city has been under a literal siege for almost two months now. And the Russians don’t allow us to bring food to the city or water to the city,” says Ryzhenkov.
“They don’t allow us to get the civilians out of the city centrally. They either let people move out in their own cars or even walk through the minefields. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe there.”
When asked why Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to take Azovstal so badly, Ryzhenkov tells CNN, “I don’t think it’s the plant he wants.”
“I think it’s about the symbolism with which they wanted to conquer Mariupol. They never expected Mariupol to resist.”
At least 150 employees were killed and thousands are still missing, he says.
“What we do know is that of the 11,000 employees in Azovstal,” Ryzhenkov says, “only about 4,500 people left Mariupol and got in touch with us so we know where they are.”
He seems to be haunted by the fate of Azovstal’s workforce.
“The whole company has tried everything in the last two months to get people to safety. Unfortunately, we are not even halfway there at the moment.”
The company’s employees belong to family dynasties that have always produced steel.
Ivan Goltvenko, a 38-year-old HR manager at the plant, is the third generation of his family to work at Azovstal.
“I had hoped that I would work for Azovstal all my life and contribute a lot to the fabric and to my city,” he says sadly.
“Seeing your city destroyed is terrifying. You could compare it to a relative dying in your arms… And watching him or her gradually die, organ after organ failing, and there’s nothing you can do.”
From the city of Zaphorizhzhia, he finds it difficult to see the extent of the devastation caused by the Russian air raids “because you want your city to remain as you remember it.”
News of what is happening at home is leaking out from friends and colleagues still stuck in Mariupol.
“Today, for example, I was shown a video of my apartment. Although the house survived, my apartment was completely looted by Russian soldiers. Nothing of value was left, they even dug under the children’s toys and many of them were stolen.”
He said he spoke to a colleague on April 24, who revealed some of the horrors facing residents.
“From one of the employees who has a connection, we know that he is in the city, did not manage to leave it, and he was involved in debris removal and transporting the bodies of dead citizens,” says Goltvenko.
“And yesterday he told me that for one day he loaded four trucks with bodies from just one part of the city, I would even say ‘just one street’.
“He said, ‘I was tempted to volunteer at the morgue to collect bodies around town and take them away.'”
“In return,” says Goltvenko, “he gets a dry ration.”
His colleague, 49-year-old Oleksiy Ehorov, deputy head of the repair department, has lived in Mariupol since childhood.
“I studied there, I started working there, that’s where I became who I am now. And to see it destroyed… You can’t say it without tears, without a lump in your throat” , said he says.
The agony is not over. Russian jets and missiles continue to pound the site, although Putin said last week there was no need to storm the industrial area around the plant.
Azovstal’s defenders have repeatedly refused to surrender their arms. Hundreds of soldiers and civilians are believed to remain at the facility.
Before the war
What happened in Azovstal is a reflection of what happened to a town proud of its history and industrial heritage.
The industrial port city was perhaps never conventionally beautiful, with chimneys spewing smoke and steam into the sky above the plant. At the port, blue and yellow cranes moved heavy objects through the busy shipyard. But Mariupol had its charm and was loved by its residents.
Great improvements have been made in recent years, green spaces have been developed and the quality of life in the working-class communities has finally improved.
“We’ve spent the last eight years building a modern and comfortable city there… a good city to live in,” says Ryzhenkov.
“We’ve completed some big environmental projects and there were still plans in place to make sure we have clean air, we have clean water and so on and so on. And now we see everything being destroyed in less than two months.”
Maryna Holovnova, 28, says “it was like a living dream” because “we had been working towards transforming the city from a purely industrial city into a cultural capital.”
The Mariupol native returned in 2020 after a 10-year absence to find a burgeoning social scene. “It was very different,” she tells CNN, proudly adding that she was even named Ukraine’s Capital of Culture by the Ministry of Culture last year.
“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 people about the city not only from the perspective of industrial development, but also from a cultural point of view [and] from a historical point of view – because Mariupol has an amazing history.”
A beaming smile spreads across her face as the former city guide recalls the route she has guided visitors along. It would begin at Mariupol’s centuries-old Old Water Tower, she says, before meandering through the city center and absorbing its many historic buildings and sites associated with local figures.
Holovnova says as the port metropolis continues to thrive, a sailing tour was introduced last year and plans are afoot to launch an industrial tour with a factory tour showing the process of steel production.
“One of my favorite places, which was weird because the locals wouldn’t understand me… was a vantage point where you could see the whole Azovstal factory and you could see how big it was, how huge it was, how awesome it was was was,” she says. “It was nothing special for the locals because we get used to it, but all the foreigners, people from other cities, they were amazed by the view.”
city under siege
The blossoming of Mariupol was an unlikely story because it was swallowed up by the violence of the 20th century. It was the scene of bitter fighting during World War II.
This time the devastation is even greater. According to Ukrainian officials, less than 20% of the city’s buildings are intact. Russia’s relentless bombing has left debris where landmarks like the Drama Theater once stood. Ukrainian officials say about 300 of the estimated 1,300 civilians who took refuge at the cultural facility are believed to have died when it was bombed in a brazen attack by Russia on March 16.
The same applies to Azovstal. Built in 1933 under Soviet rule, it was partially demolished during the Nazi occupation of the 1940s before being rebuilt.
Now it’s gone again — its carcass housing Ukrainian soldiers and around 1,000 civilians in a maze of underground chambers, according to Ukrainian officials.
An estimated 100,000 people remain in the city. On Thursday, local authorities warned that Mariupol was vulnerable to epidemics given the appalling sanitary conditions in much of the city and the possibility that thousands of bodies would go uncollected.
Oleksiy Ehorov can’t think about what happened to his city – and his family. His mother-in-law died from injuries sustained from shelling during her first attempt to escape to Zaporizhia.
“My feelings already disappeared there in Mariupol. So there is nothing but hate,” he tells CNN.
Ehorov says he loved life by the sea and had hoped to stay at the steel mill until his retirement.
Now he can only watch as Russia continues to block the city and his former workplace.
When asked if he would work under the Russians if they took over the factory, he echoed Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and the main shareholder in the group behind Azovstal Steel.
“No. I wont. After what they did… never.”
CNN’s Tim Lister contributed to this report from Lviv, Ukraine, and Kostan Nechyporenko from Kyiv.