Kryvyi Rih on the brink of survival: the city’s largest metallurgical enterprises have been shut down

Alexander Vilkul, head of the Kryvyi Rih defense council, has stated that the situation in the city is worse than anywhere else except the front line.

He wrote about this in an address published on Facebook.

According to Vilkul, the backbone of the city’s economy — the mining and metallurgical complex — is effectively not functioning. “ArcelorMittal is idle. Ingulets GOK is idle. Yuzhny is idle. KZhRK is idle. Other large enterprises are operating at no more than a quarter of their pre-war output,” he listed. Along with the major enterprises, all the contractor organizations that support their operations are also at a standstill.

The halt in production has directly hit the city budget. Due to a reduction in tax revenues, city authorities have been forced to sequester the budget for the current year — a number of important projects will be frozen. At the same time, Vilkul assured that the functioning of all key life-support systems will be maintained.

The defense council head described the outlook for next year as “very bad.” According to him, the priority will be keeping schools, kindergartens, hospitals, water supply, and heating systems operational.

“We will try to preserve the social support program for people… But this is not about development. This is about survival. Right now we need to survive,” Vilkul said.