Ukraine’s mining giant Metinvest announced Tuesday the closure of a major coal mine outside Pokrovsk, key to Kyiv’s war effort as Russian troops approach the eastern hub.
The mine is Ukraine’s last producer of coking coal and a key pillar of the war-torn country’s economy.
Here is what we know about the mine’s importance.
“Pokrovske Coal holds a strategically crucial position in Ukraine’s economy as the country’s only remaining operating coking coal producer,” its owner Metinvest says.
Coking coal is a key component needed to produce steel.
The mine produced 5.6 million tonnes of coal in 2023, according to an interview from the mine’s CEO Andriy Akulych.
One of the mine’s shafts, located in Pishchane, which provided around half of Metinvest’s total Ukrainian coal extraction volume, suspended operations last month due to nearing combat.
But the other shafts, west of Pokrovsk, continued production at a “reduced capacity”, Metinvest had told AFP at the time.
Last year Metinvest spent almost 400 million hryvnias ($9.4 million) in fortifications around Pokrovsk and other Ukrainian frontline cities, according to an interview with its chief operating officer, published on the company’s website.
“Our priority remains ensuring the safety of our employees while maintaining critical industrial operations where possible,” Metinvest said.
But Metinvest added it had been forced to close operations “due to the evolving frontline conditions, power supply shortages and the deteriorating security situation”.
The mine “serves as the energy heart of Ukrainian metallurgy and provides significant export revenues to Ukraine’s budget”, Metinvest told AFP.
The complex, which employed around 10,000 people before the war, is crucial to Ukraine’s steel industry.
“If Ukraine lost Pokrovsk, the production of steel would more than halve,” said Oleksandr Kalenkov, President of Ukrmetallurgprom, an association of metal companies.
The metallurgical sector accounted for around one-tenth of Ukraine’s GDP before the war, according to the Ukraine-based GMK think tank.
Kalenkov estimated the fall of the mine would mean losing about $4.55 billion in exports and about 15 billion hryvnias ($350 million) in direct taxes from the steel industry.
The halt in operations could also threaten Ukraine’s military industry, which relies on domestically produced steel for fortifications, military infrastructure and equipment.
“You could replace it with imports, but it will take time and efforts because we spent these two-and-a-half years (of war) to tailor specific steel for the needs of the army,” Kalenkov said.
Russia has been trying to capture Pokrovsk — a city that had a pre-war population of some 60,000 — since last summer.
The Russian army is now at the gates of Pokrovsk, after weeks of steady advances, outnumbering Ukrainian forces.
Citing military officials, Ukrainian media have reported that Russia wants to take control of a key highway — the E50 — that links Pokrovsk to the city of Dnipro.
“Pokrovsk is an important town from the point of view of Russian offensive. If Russians take Pokrovsk, the road to Dnipro would be open to them,” a senior Ukrainian official told AFP.
Pushing westwards, Russian troops have been seizing villages in the Donetsk region nearing the border with the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Both sides have tried to press an advantage on the battlefield ahead of US president-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House next week.
Source: Barron’s
