kYIV: A major coal mine around the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk halted operations and evacuated staff, the operator said on Tuesday, with advancing Russian troops just a few kilometers from its facilities.
The mine and the city of Pokrovsk are at risk of being captured by Russian forces, who are pressing hard to try to seize the strategically important city in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
“Metinvest announces the suspension of operations at Pokrovske Coal due to the evolving frontline conditions, power supply shortages and the deteriorating security situation,” the mine’s owner, steelmaker Metinvest, said in a statement.
“Faced with a deteriorating security situation, we cannot risk the lives of thousands of employees and their families,” CEO Yuriy Ryzhenkov said in a statement.
The site is Ukraine’s last producer of coking coal — a key pillar for the war-torn economy used in the production of steel.
It employed around 10,000 people before the war and produced 5.6 million tons of coal in 2023, according to the mine’s CEO Andriy Akulych.
The closure is a blow to Ukraine, whose economy has been ravaged by the Russian invasion.
The eastern Donbas region, that Russia claims as its own and where the toughest fighting has taken place, is Ukraine’s historic industrial heartland, a bedrock of heavy industry dating back to the Soviet era.
The Pokrvosk mine was also a major source of exports and contributed “significant” revenues to the state budget, the company said, adding that it was “implementing an emergency action plan to ensure the supply of essential raw materials” to its steel plants elsewhere in Ukraine.
That included increasing deliveries from the group’s US-based coal company and using up reserves — though experts said Ukrainian steel would likely become less competitive without access to the mine’s coal.
“With the loss of Pokrovsk, the steel industry would need to import coking coal, which will most likely increase of the price of Ukrainian steel products leading to a decrease of its exports,” Volodymyr Landa, senior analyst of Kyiv-based Center for Economic Strategy, told AFP.
Russian forces are around six kilometers (four miles) from the center of Pokrovsk, according to the DeepState website, which is close to the Ukrainian army.
The city is an important logistics hub and sits on a major road that runs west toward the city of Dnipro.
Pokrovsk mine halts work as Russia advances in Ukraine
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Pokrovsk mine halts work as Russia advances in Ukraine
- The mine and the city of Pokrovsk are at risk of being captured by Russian forces
- The site is Ukraine’s last producer of coking coal — a key pillar for the war-torn economy used in the production of steel
