You’ve probably heard the name on the news. Currently it’s the last Ukrainian-controlled area of Mariupol, and it’s been housing the Ukrainian forces as well as a number of civilians who have sheltered with them. Prior to all this — and, really, prior to the Coronavirus pandemic — it was easily the largest employer in the Mariupol area. One of four steel plants located in Mariupol, it was also one of the largest steel plants in Ukraine. (Its parent company, MetInvest, is probably the largest private company in Ukraine.)

It had been operating for decades, and four generations of Viktoria’s family had worked there. Viktoria worked there for 30 years, and before that, her paternal grandmother, V’s father and even her mother for a short time worked at Azovstal. Until about the end of last year, Zhenya worked there as well.

Apparently that place really is massive, both in terms of horizontal area, but also by vertical depth. According to Viktoria, some of the tunnels were open and regularly used by employees to get around the plant. Other parts were a little more restricted. Being part of the electrical crew, Zhenya spent some time in the less public tunnels. A few years back, when there was a lot of metal and wire theft happening at the plant, Zhenya was actually accosted by some of the bandits in the tunnels. And according to Viktoria, her father told her about some of the discussions he’d have at breaks with his coworkers about possible chemical labs and secret development areas the Soviets ran under the plant.

There’s been a lot of discussion about evacuations for the people sheltering at Azovstal, but nothing has come to pass so far. It was widely reported just yesterday that Putin had agreed “in principle” to an Azovstal evacuation with the UN (Putin agrees “in principle” to UN, Red Cross involvement in evacuations from Mariupol – UN chief’s spox (ukrinform.net)), but Russia is out today denying that any such plans are in the works (Russia denies agreement with UN to evacuate civilians from Mariupol’s Azovstal – News April 27, 2022 – 0629.com.ua). Meanwhile, Russian artillery continues to pound the area (Russian forces carried out 35 air strikes on Azovstal in past 24hrs, civilians injured (ukrinform.net)).

Here’s a video of some of the people hiding in the tunnels. You can probably fast-forward over a lot of it; it is mostly static shots of the people talking about the conditions and such. For non-Russian speakers (and yes, most of the people in Mariupol speak Russian — the same people the Russian attacks were supposed to be in support of), just take a look at the conditions. Compared to some other photos and videos I’ve seen, things aren’t as bad, but we still aren’t talking about anything that good either.

While seeing Mariupol getting destroyed has been hard on Viktoria, especially when she gets images of “our” apartment block, watching and reading about the events at Azovstal have been painful as well. She put in 30 years of her life at that factory. She knows and understands what a key part of the city it was, not just for her family, but for many, many of the people and families in Mariupol. I’m sure there were days when she hated going to work, but even on the worst of those days, it’s clear to me that she never would have wished for something like this.