Azovstal, the steel plant contested between Russians and Ukrainians

Its name has been all over the news media for days: we are talking about Azovstal, the Mariupol steel plant in Ukraine that has become a battlefront in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

But what do we know about this factory, in which thousands of resilient Ukrainian civilians and soldiers are currently entrenched?

Azovstal Iron & Steel Works is - or perhaps we'd better say "was" - one of the largest metalworking companies in Ukraine. It is part of Metinvest, a steel and mining group owned by Ukraine's richest man, tycoon Rinat Akhmetov.

According to official figures, its production capacity amounted to 5.7 million tons of iron, 6.2 million tons of steel, and 4.7 million tons of finished rolled products per year. Actually founded by the Russians in 1930, the first blast furnace began to operate about three years later. The huge metalworking factory consists of four facilities: the coke plant, the iron plant, the steel plant, and the rolling plants.

Azovstal is a city within the city - with its impressive extension of more than 10 km² - but also a city under the city: a sophisticated subterranean network of tunnels, bunkers, and various communication systems branch out in the underground levels of the plant, which make it a perfect bastion for the Ukrainian resistance. You can find an interesting map of the factory underground in the picture at this link. According to some sources, the site is designed to withstand even nuclear attacks.

The plants have been at a standstill since the beginning of hostilities on February 24, with knock-on effects also affecting customers of the Ukraine steel giant. For example, sources report that Azovstal's steels were used to build the new bridge in Genoa while slabs were used as a semifinished product by Marcegaglia and Tecnosider in Italy, Laminoir des Landes in France, and Dunaferr in Hungary.

Russian troops were supposed to launch the final assault on the factory in response to the Ukrainians' refusal to surrender. However, on April 21, Putin called off the operation
to "preserve the lives and health of soldiers and officers," calling on those who have not yet laid down their arms to do so.

Metinvest, which also owns the large industrial complex of Illich in Mariupol, told Reuters that it's never going to operate under Russian occupation.

In the picture, the Azovstal plant in a photo taken in 2014 by Chad Nagle, source Flickr.

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