‘No culture, no sports, only fighting’: The steel town that forged Volodymyr Zelensky
Before he was Ukraine’s president and a global icon of democracy, Volodymyr Zelensky was a boy from the gritty former Soviet industrial city of Kryvyi Rih.
Union leader Natalya Marynyuk is responsible for organising nearly 20,000 steelworkers casting iron every day at Kryvyi Rih’s massive blast furnaces. Located in the Metallurgical District, the 86-year-old Soviet-era facility lacks many modern mechanical processes, making the labour much more intense.
“It is tough work by hard people,” says Marynyuk, the local head of the Trade Union of the Metalworkers and Miners of Ukraine.
Misha ZelinskyColumnistMisha Zelinsky is a Fulbright Scholar, a former assistant national secretary Australian Workers' Union, and expert associate at the National Security College.
