Two days ago, a coastguard boat was sunk off the coast just 30 km (19 miles) away. But since the fall last week of Novoazovsk, about 40 km (25 miles) up the coast, to a separatist force that Kiev says was backed by a Russian armoured column, the frontline has come ever closer. The Ilyich plant continued working, more or less unscathed though hit by shortages of materials. It also stopped production at its main coke plant Avdiyivka, which produces 40 percent of Ukraine’s coke. On August 18 Metinvest announced it was halting production at three plants after artillery fire destroyed their power supply. Other Metinvest plants in the Donbas region have been shut. The Ilyich steelworks is a 15 km (10 mile) maze of production facilities, rusty pipes, roads and railway tracks with a workforce of 27,000, and keeping it going in war time is no mean feat. Residents now seem firmly with Kiev - although the opinions heard on the streets in eastern Ukraine have been known to depend on which side’s armed men are in control. Most people here identify themselves as ethnic Ukrainians, although they speak Russian as their native language. The plant is owned by Metinvest, the industrial conglomerate of Rinat Akhmetov, by far Ukraine’s richest man, whose decision to send his workers to help chase away rebels was one of the first important signs that Kiev had a chance of reasserting control over rebel territory. “We got organised, we resisted and we won,” said smelter production manager Alexander Ilarionov, adding that most workers were ready to defend the plant and the city once again. But metalworkers took to the streets in June, joining police patrols to help sweep the rebels out, the start of a government fightback that had continued until the rebel advance last week. Pro-Russian separatists took over buildings in the city in April when they rose up against Kiev. The port is a strategic link between the rebel-held regional capital Donetsk to the north, the sea, and the land route to the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in March.
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