AVDIIVKA, Ukraine — In early 2015, Musa Magomedov, the director of the Avdiivka coke and chemical plant in eastern Ukraine, gathered 100 of the facility’s shift managers and gave them a choice: they could either shutter the billion-dollar business, or continue operations.
The bloody conflict in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces that kicked off in April 2014 was escalating and the plant — about 340 miles southeast of Ukraine’s capital of Kiev — was now on the frontlines of the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Rockets regularly buzzed overhead and the boom of heavy artillery was audible through the hisses of the plant’s machines.
“It wasn’t fair to ask people to come to work and risk their lives every day if they weren’t part of the decision-making process,” Magomedov says.
Despite the risks, the group decided the factory would operate through the conflict, providing some sense of normalcy, heating, and much-needed income to area residents.
Two years later a blockade in eastern Ukraine now threatens the future of the Avdiivka plant and the health of Ukraine’s already shaky economy. Activists, with the support of some politicians, initiated the blockade in January with the intention of halting trade between businesses in Ukrainian and separatist-held territories. In mid-March the government in Kiev joined in, reversing itself and announcing a full transportation blockade of rebel-held areas, a move that shows little sign of abating in the near future.
“What am I supposed to tell these guys after they’ve been through so much? ‘Sorry, but politics are more important than your pay’?” Magomedov says in frustration.
The stakes are high for Avdiivka, the surrounding Donbas region and for Ukraine. Economic uncertainty from the halt in trade has prompted the International Monetary Fund to delay delivery of the next instment of its aid package to Ukraine. Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman estimates that Ukraine will lose 75,000 jobs and at least $3.5 billion in foreign-exchange earnings by year’s end. The country’s central bank estimates economic growth could be halved if the blockade does not lift, according to Reuters.
Avdiivka’s population has shrunk from 35,000 to an estimated 16,000 during the course of the 3-year-long conflict. Magomedov says prospective town shop owners first call him before opening a shop, seeking assurances that wages will be paid on time. (During the course of a 30-minute interview, he receives three phone calls. One from the city’s mayor checking up on the factory.)
Magomedov says 200 of the factory’s 4,000 employees have been taken off their regular 12-hour shifts — a similar move was made during the height of fighting in 2014 and 15. Some busy themselves with repairs to the factory, while others are reading manuals during the day to stay busy. They receive 66 percent of their monthly salary of $223. The factory director worries that if the blockade continues another 800 workers will also be taken off their shifts in April.
Nataliya Vasilyevna, one of the workers relegated to reading manuals, says she opposes the blockade. “The entire system was built in Soviet times and interconnected. I understand that politicians might want to change something, but it takes time. To do something this suddenly — it just doesn’t make sense.”
An hour-and-a-half drive from the factory in the town of Bakhmut, blockaders express little sympathy for the region’s industry workers, focusing instead on what they call the “trade in blood” between Ukrainian businesses on separatist-held areas and those on government-controlled territory.
The group of several dozen men, supplied with canned goods, pasta and what appeared to be Molotov cocktails, has camped out, determined to ensure no train crosses the tracks. Since the protesters set up the first blockade on January 26, separatists have taken control over Ukrainian businesses on their side of the demarcation line.
Before the full blockade was in place, Kiev had allowed cargo trains to crisscross the frontlines, servicing the factories and mines that are the bread-and-butter of the industrial Donbas region. Such trade was an open secret, reported by the Western press in 2015. The factories in separatist-held areas continued to pay millions of dollars in much-needed taxes to Kiev as well as to the separatists, while keeping thousands of workers in the region employed.
While the workers benefited from a steady flow of wages during the conflict, protesters say that doing business with the separatists helped keep the self-declared republics afloat, all the while the oligarch who owned the region’s industries, Rinat Akhmetov, continued to turn a profit.
Semyen Semyenchenko, a member of parliament who rose to prominence for his work as an activist in the “Euromaidan” protests, a wave of demonstrations demanding closer ties with Europe and a more transparent form of governance, is now an avid supporter of the blockade. His reason is simple: “Buying things from the occupiers is financing terrorism,” Semyenchenko said, referring to the separatists and the continued conflict with Ukrainian forces.
Opponents of the blockade say cutting coal supplies could also cause blackouts, since around 15 percent of the country’s electricity is coal powered. Semyenchenko dismisses those fears, saying the country needs to diversify its power sources.
Semyenchenko says a prolonged suspension of trade won’t destroy the region’s industry. “Listen, we have a medicine called Prozac. It helps people worry less.”
In Kiev, support for the blockade was initially split between competing factions, with Groysman referring to the protesters’ encampment as “populist PR.” However, shortly after state security services forcefully dispersed one encampment and rebels seized companies owned by Akhmetov on separatist-held territories, Groysman’s ruling coalition flipped their position. The blockade, they say, will stay in place until businesses the rebels seized are returned, including the ones owned by Akhmetov, considered Ukraine’s richest person.
Nevertheless, the blockaders say they aren’t going anywhere soon. A man in his mid-20s who calls himself “Katana,” referring to the Japanese Samurai sword, said the rhetoric from Kiev is just a distraction. “They want us to leave and then they’ll go back to cutting deals with the occupiers,” he says, referring to the Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region.
Plant director Magamedov, meanwhile, says he isn’t sure how much longer the coal supply will last. The type of coal needed is available from the U.S. and Australia, but it is more expensive. The blockages have caused the factory to post losses in January and February. “We’re part of a system,” he says, if the factory is cut off from their suppliers, it doesn’t bode well for the future.
Back out in the factory production area, Genadii Golovatiuk glances from his corner office window toward a wagon full of coal waiting to be transported on the inter-factory track for smelting into coke.
“This is what it’s all about,” he says wryly gesturing outside. The 59-year old has spent his work life in the coke industry, the past 20 at the factory in Avdiivka. When asked about current events, he offers a bit of sage advice: “Don’t choose your house, choose your neighbors.”
Will another shipment of coal arrive anytime soon? That, he says, is a question for the neighbors, not him.
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