It was late at night, and Anton Telegin was using the darkness to avoid Russian attack drones, heading for an expanding coal mine near Ukraine's eastern front.
Mr. Telegin had come to collect wages for himself and some of his fellow miners, as he did at the end of every month. But the trip the day after Christmas felt different: Russian troops were at one of the mine's far gates, wondering if it would be his last visit to the place where he had worked for 18 years. In the past few months, he and his colleagues have toiled under increasing Russian attacks.
Two days ago, a strike knocked out the station's electrical substation and shut it down. Sensing the end, at the end of long shifts, some miners took their towels and shampoo from the changing rooms where they had soaked up soot.
40-year-old Mr. Telegin recalled: “People were collecting their belongings and saying goodbye.”
Mr. Telegin has not returned to the mine since Christmas and is currently in Kyiv. The impending fighting kept the facility out of action, and on Tuesday the mine's owner, Metinvest, announced that the facility is now closed.
The closure of the mine is located only in the southeast The city of PokrovskIt ended Ukraine's desperate effort to hold it until the last moment. As the last operating mine producing coking coal, an essential fuel for Ukraine's steel production, it was vital to the country's steel industry and, ultimately, its war effort.
Miners who stayed despite the threats were offered a pay rise by Metinvest. To reach the mining areas closest to the front, they had to go through kilometers of tunnels that protected them from attacks. The shooting caused frequent blackouts, keeping them underground for hours.
“There is constant fire and it's very close,” said Maksym Rastyahaev, head of the mining division, during a phone call after his shift at the mine shortly before Christmas. “Only the hardiest workers remained.”
Now the mine closure is expected to send shock waves through the economy. According to Oleksandr Kalenkov, head of the Ukrainian Steel Producers Association, steel production is forecast to more than halve from 7.5 million tons this year to less than 3 million tons next year. The fall will affect trade – it was metal and steel products Ukraine's second largest export last year — reducing tax revenues and depriving the military of materials needed to manufacture armor.
“The impact is huge in all aspects,” said Mr. Kalenkov.
The mine near Pokrovsk is not the first mine that has fallen into Russia, owned by the forces It destroyed much of the industrial base of eastern Ukraine. But its story is one of Ukraine's resilience: Coal output rose to 3.2 million tonnes in 2023, close to pre-war levels after Russia scaled back operations in 2022. Many residents that year He returned to Pokrovskhe hoped that the course of the war would turn in Ukraine's favor.
Mining was the economic lifeline for the area. In 2023, Metinvest employed approximately 4,500 people at the facility, many of whom had spent most of their working lives there. “I am a miner. I don't know how to do anything else. All I know is coal mining,” says 35-year-old Yuri Nesterenko, who has worked there for ten years.
The pay was good and Metinvest's mining facilities reflected a sense of care. On a visit this summer, the mine boasted flower beds, fountains and an Orthodox church adorned with gold icons and intricate ceilings, offering miners a quiet retreat to pray.
By the end of the summer of 2024, the first signs of danger appeared. New Russian advances in the east prompted a mobilization that drained the mine's workforce. encourages the recruitment of women to replace conscripted men. Even more interesting, the mine lay on the road Russia's transition to Pokrovsky's sidea major military logistics center.
Engineer Vyacheslav Dryha, who came out of the mine in the fall and is currently in Kharkiv, says: “Everyone hoped that the Ukrainian soldiers would hold the line. Some workers started monitoring battle maps daily, tracks Russia's progress.
At the end of September, strikes at the mine killed four female workers in a matter of days. Two were waiting in the laundry room and two were waiting at the bus stop. The deaths sent chills through the ranks, prompting many to leave and join The influx of residents evacuating Pokrovsky. Russian forces were less than 10 miles away.
After that, miners described strikes becoming more and more frequent. Some chose to drive their cars into the mine instead of taking the bus, so they could better avoid the drones seen overhead. Mine shaft No. 3 located in the village of Pishchane, closest to the front, began to be fired regularly.
In early December, when No. 3 shaft became too dangerous to use, the miners switched to descending through another shaft farther west. From there, they faced a two-hour, six-mile trek through underground tunnels to reach the coal faces beneath No. 3 mine. To return, they boarded conveyor belts carrying freshly mined coal.
It was a dangerous job. As a result of the shooting, the electrical and ventilation systems sometimes failed, forcing the miners to evacuate. However, in the battles above, they still felt safer underground, in the dark tunnels of the mine, some 2,000 feet deep.
“The earth itself kind of protects you,” said Volodymyr Kohanevych, who maintains equipment at the mine.
Keeping the mine operational for as long as possible was critical to Metinvest, which uses coking coal to smelt iron ore into steel at its factories further west. Steel is used to make rails for Ukrainian railways, vehicle during the waralso body armor and helmets for soldiers. Metinvest earlier this month began the production of protective armor plates For US-made Patriot air defense systems that protect Ukrainian skies.
“We are like a second front, working for victory,” Mr. Telegin said of the miners and steelworkers.
But by mid-December, Mr. Telegin and his colleagues knew that this second front had collapsed. Russian troops had advanced to within a mile of Shaft 3, raising fears they could capture it and use its tunnels to overrun Ukrainian positions. In response, miners working with the military began drilling holes down the shaft to plant explosives, according to several workers.
A few days later, around December 20, the shaft was blown up. “Everything fell apart and now everything is rock,” said Mr. Telegin.
A Metinvest manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak, said explosives were placed in two other mines of the facility further west, near the villages of Kotlyne and Udachne, which remain under Ukrainian control today. It is not clear whether they have already been detonated.
The manager said that if 7,000 tons of coal were produced per day this summer, by mid-December the production decreased to a little more than 2,000 tons. On Christmas Eve, a strike at a power substation dealt the final blow: the mine was closed and production dropped to zero.
Mr. Kalenkov, a steel expert, says that the closure of the mine has put Ukraine in a difficult situation. Importing coking coal to compensate for the loss would be costly and complicated by wartime logistical obstacles. He expects a tension an already fragile economybut also cuts in defense industry projects such as armor production for Patriot systems.
“The loss of the mine clearly hinders Ukraine's combat capability,” said Mr. Kalenkov.
Many of the remaining 1,000 or so miners have now moved to cities further from the front, such as Kiev, Kharkiv and the Dnieper. Some have already secured new jobs in factories, while others remain uncertain about their prospects.
Mr Rastyahaev, 40, who has worked in the mine for half his life, said it was “very painful” to leave a place he had helped build and develop. When he spoke last week, he had yet to hear from management about the future of the mine.
“Honestly,” he said, “I think this is the end.”