Place:Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine

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Kryvyi Rih ( or 'Crooked Horn', Krivoy Rog) is the largest city in central Ukraine and 7th most populous city in the country; 2nd biggest city in the country by area. It lies within a large urban area with approximately one million inhabitants and serves as the administrative center of Kryvyi Rih Raion. The city’s population at the beginning of 2022 is estimated at 646,748. It hosts the administration of Kryvyi Rih urban community.^[1]

Located at the confluence of the Saksahan and Inhulets rivers, Kryvyi Rih was founded as a staging post in 1775 and developed as a military settlement. Urban growth followed Belgian, French and British investment in the exploitation of area's rich iron-ore deposits (generally called Kryvbas) in the 1880’s. Kryvyi Rih gained city status after the October Revolution in 1919.

Stalin-era industrialisation saw the development in the city from 1934 of Kryvorizhstal, the largest integrated metallurgical works in the Soviet Union. After a brutal German occupation in World War Two, Kryvyi Rih experienced industrial and urban growth through to the 1970s. The economic dislocation associated with the break-up of the Soviet Union contributed to high unemployment and a large-scale exodus from the city in the 1990s. The privatization of Kryvorizhstal in 2005 was followed by increased foreign and private investment which helped finance urban regeneration. Beginning in 2017, there were major labor protests and strikes.

In their February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, forces of the Russian Federation approached the city’s outskirts from Russian-occupied Crimea. In March, their advance stalled some 50 km to the south. Kryvyi Rih is the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

History

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Etymology

Kryvyi Rih, which in Ukrainian literally means "Crooked Horn" or "Curved Cape", was the name originally given in the 18th century to the general area of the present city by Zaporozhian Cossacks. According to local legend, the first village in the area was founded by a "crooked" (Ukrainian slang for "one-eyed") Cossack named Rih ("Horn"), but the name likely derives from the shape of the landmass formed by the confluence of the river Saksahan with the Inhulets.

Early history

In 1734 the Cossack Zaporizhian Sich (or Host) incorporated the area within the Inhulets Palanka division of their de-facto republic. A list of villages and winter camps from that time mentions Kryvyi Rih. In 1770, Kryvyi Rih was again recorded as the camp of Zaporizhian Sich.

On May 8, 1775, after the end of the Russian-Turkish War, Russian authorities established Kryvyi Rih as a staging post (attended by 5 Cossacks) on the roads to the Russian garrisons of Kremenchuk, Kinburn foreland and Ochakov. In August of that year, on the direct order of Catherine the Great, the Sich was forcibly dissolved. The cossack lands were annexed to the Russian province of Novorossiya and distributed among the Russian and Ukrainian gentry.

The early 19th century saw the construction of the first stone houses (1828), and three water mills. In 1860 the village was designated a township.

Industrial growth

Alexander Pol (also known as Paul), a Russian Imperial geologist, discovered and initiated iron ore investigation and production in this area. He is credited with discovering the Kryvbas. This stimulated formation of a mining district. In 1884 Alexander II initiated the, Catherine Railroad, first to Dnipro and then 505 km to the coal-mining region of Donbas.

In 1880, with 5 million francs of capital, Pol founded the "French Society of Kryvyi Rih Ores". In 1882 16.4 thousand tons of ore were extracted from surface mines on the outskirts of town by 150 workers. The first underground mine of the basin began operations in 1886. In1892, when Hdantsivka ironworks was started, ore began to be processed locally, spawning new metalurgical enterprises spurred by substantial western, and in particular Belgian, investment.. At the same time Kryvyi Rih ore began to feed the German metalurgical industry in Silesia. In 1902, the Catherine Railroad linked Kryvyi Rih to the coal mines of the Donbas.

At the end of the 19th century the tallest building was the Central Synagogue, built by a thriving Jewish community of artisans, merchants and traders.^[2] In 1905 the community was subject to pogroms in which the authorities were complicit. Many Jewish people left the area, emigrating to Germany, Austria-Hungary and the United States.

The surrounding mines attracted prospectors looking to turn a quick profit. The supply of mined ore soon exceeded demand. Many mines had to cut employment or temporarily suspend operations. Workers, many drawn from the Russian-speaking north (from Great Russia), labored in harsh conditions with no security. Work in the mines induced lung cancer, tuberculosis and asthma. In protest, workers began to develop ideas about socialism and democracy. Labor unrest resulted in several terrorist attacks and in widespread strikes.

The First World War interrupted access to the export markets, and many workers were drafted into the military. A council of soviet of Soldiers and Worker's Deputies in 1917. January 1918 saw the first attempt by the Bolsheviks to establish the authority in the town of the new Soviet government in Moscow.

The Soviet era

The Civil War

In the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, Kryvyi Rih changed hands several times. In February 1918, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, but then conceded the territory under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the German-controlled Ukrainian State., After the Germans and their Austro-Hungarian allies withdrew in November 1918, the town was successively occupied by the nationalists of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the counter-revolutionary Volunteer Army of General Denikin (the "Whites"),^[3] the anarchist Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (the Makhnovshchina) and, from 17 January 1920, by the Bolshevik Red Army. In 1922 the region was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR, a constituent republic of the Soviet Union.

Industrialisation, collectivisation

The town, with a population of 22,571, was now designated a city. Mine operations were revived, and in 1924 a 55.3 km (34.4 mi) water-supply system was laid underground. In the summer of 1927, 10,000 people began to work on the Dnieprostroi, a huge dame on the Dnieper River in Zaporizhzhia, whose hydro-electric power was to drive Kryvyi Rih's industrialisation. The first Mining Institute opened in 1929. The Medical and Pedagogical Institutes were founded.

In line with Stalin's plans for break-neck industrialisation, in 1931 the foundation of the Kryvyi Rih Metallurgical Plant, the future Kryvorizhstal, was laid. The first blast furnace of the metallurgical works produced steel three years later. The city grew rapidly. In the surrounding countryside, industrialisation was accompanied the collectivisation of agriculture. The dispossession of the peasants and the confiscation of their harvests induced the Holodomor or Great Famine of 1932–33.

By 1941, at over 200,000, the population of the industrial city had increased almost tenfold.

Nazi occupation

During World War II, Kryvyi Rih was occupied by the German Army from 15 August 1941 to 22 February 1944, and was administered for most of that period as part of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In advance of the Germans, industrial plant and machine operators were evacuated to Nizhny Tagil in the Urals.^[4] An initial toleration of Ukrainian cultural activity and OUN propaganda in the town, ended in January and February 1942 with the arrest and execution of the leading Ukrainian activists.

In 1939 12,745 Jews had lived in Krivoy Rog, comprising about 6 per cent of the total population. Those who did not succeed in leaving the city during the organized evacuation were systematically concentrated and murdered by the Nazi occupiers. The first mass killing of two to three hundred by an Einsatzkommando occurred at the end of August 1941 at a brick works. On 14–15 October a combination of SS, German police and Ukrainian auxiliaries murdered 7,000 more at an iron ore mine. Children were thrown into the pits alive.

Hitler had repeatedly stressed the crucial importance of this area: "The Nikopol manganese is of such importance, it cannot be expressed in words. Loss of Nikopol (on the Dnieper River, southwest of Zaporozhye) would mean the end of war." The German bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnieper gave the German command a base in order to restore the land connection with their forces locked in the Crimea. During the first half of January 1944, Soviet troops made repeated attempts to eliminate the Nikopol-Krivoy Rog enemy group, but the Nikopol–Krivoy Rog Offensive did not succeed in breaking into the city until the end of February. Although the greater part of city was destroyed, a special 37th Red Army detachment prevented the German demolition of the power stations in the city and the Saksahan dams.

Post-war Soviet city

After the war, people lived among the ruins while rebuilding the housing stock. The housing shortage was met by innovative technological solutions, and temporary barracks and houses were quickly built.

In the late 1940s, re-construction was accompanied by Stakhanovite propaganda: Pre-war iron ore production was restored by 1950.^[4] In 1961 this was supplemented by new mines and by the Central and, Northern Iron Ore Enrichment Works. By the end of the Soviet era Kryvbas was producing 42% of USSR and 80% of Ukrainian ore.

At the beginning of the 1960s, the city received a signature 185m-tall, guyed tubular steel TV mast. It also saw housing stock replaced and expanded with several large Khrushchyovkas apartment complexes, and urban planning incorporating broad tree-lined avenues with trams lines running down their center.

On June 16–18, 1963, increased food prices triggered protests in the city, estimated to involve between 1,000 and 6,000 people. After an ex-serviceman who had interceded with the police was severely beaten, there was rioting. Moscow sent in troops. While the authorities admitted to 4 dead and 15 wounded, witnesses report that soldiers killed at least 7, and that over 200 people were hospitalised with injuries. Fifteen hundred people received prison sentences.^[4]

In 1975, the city's two-hundredth anniversary was marked by the development of the Jubilee mine and adjacent residential area, and by the construction of a new city administration building and park. In September 1976 Krivorozh wool spinning factory was commissioned.^[4]

In last years of the Soviet Union, and following a sharp reduction in spending on cultural, sports and youth service, the city witnessed neighborhood-based.gang violence—the so-called "war of Runners". The era of Perestrioka was also marked by the emergence of independent trade unions, and of new civic and political organisations.

In independent Ukraine

Redevelopment and politics

In a national referendum on 1 December 1991, Ukrainian independence was approved by 90% of the votes cast in Kryvyi Rih's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The first 25 years of independence was a period of economic dislocation and adjustment. The population of the city decreased by almost 100,000 from a peak of 780,000 in the late 1980s.^[5]

Assisted by Metinvest, investment followed the 2005 privatization of Kryvorizhstal, and there was extensive redevelopment including new shopping and entertainment centers. In July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, Kryvyi Rih Municipality and the Kryvyi Rih Raion came under a common city authority. The city remains the second most important in the Dnipropetrovsk region after Dnipro. In Krivyi Rog has two independent universities, and several institutes and technical schools.^[4]

Until the events of Euromaidan in 2014 and their aftermath, in local and national elections Kryvyi Rih favored Russian-friendly candidates belonging first, in the 1990s, to the Communist Party of Ukraine and then, in the new century, the Party of Regions. In 2010, city elected Party of Regions Yuriy Vilkul mayor, and helped Viktor Yanukovych to victory in the presidential election. After the Euromaidan events, which were accompanied by demonstrations and clashes in the city centre, support began to ebb from the Party of Regions. Petro Poroshenko, who insisted that Russian separatists in the Donbas "don't represent anybody", was supported in the presidential election of 2014. Vilkul was re-elected mayor in 2015, but amidst large-scale protests alleging electoral fraud.

In the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election the city supported its native son Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who defeated Poroshenko in the second round in April.^[6][7][8] In the July 2019 elections for the Ukrainian Rada, candidates for Zelenskyy's Servant of the People Party won the city's three parliamentary seats. However, in December 2020, the Servant of the People candidate for mayor, Dmytr Shevchuk, lost to Kostantin Pavlov of the pro-Russian Opposition Platform — For Life.

On 15 August 2021, Pavlov was found dead in the entrance to his home, a gun lying next to his body. In September, reporting on an investigation that included a search of the home of the former, and now acting, mayor, Yyriy Vilkul, the Minister of Internal Affairs D. Monastyrsky suggested that Pavlov may have committed suicide against the backdrop of a large-scale audit of the city's budget.

Labour protests

Beginning in 2017 Kryvyi Rih witnessed major labour unrest. In May 2017, coordinated protest actions began at the city's main plants, Kryvyi Rih Iron Ore Plant, Evraz-Sukha Balka and AMKR. Employees stopped work, held public meetings and occupied administration offices. Conscious that they were receiving one of the lowest wages across the global industry, the metalworkers raised the demand for a monthly wage of US$1,000/Euros. The conflict stopped after an agreement was reached to gradually raise wages (on average by 50%). But the following year, protest erupted again triggered by the fatal result of underinvestment in plant and safety. On the night of 3–4 March 2018, the roof collapsed at AMKR's converter shop, killing a 25-year-old worker.

In May, the ArcelorMittal steel plant ground to a halt as workers refused to guide trains along the factory's self-enclosed supply chain until they received monthly pay of 1,000 euros. Management brought in employees from state-owned railway company Ukrzaliznytsia to run the factory, breaking the strike but leaving the central dispute in place. An underlying problem, according to ArcelorMittal's chief procurement officer, is a labour shortage. Skilled workers are emigrating to Poland, Czechia, and to other countries. But the plant's upper management sees costs associated with the higher salaries that might retain workers as an unacceptable threat to an ambitious, multibillion-dollar factory modernization project.

Kryvorizhstal, Ukraine's largest integrated steel company, had been privatised in 2005 in publicly televised auction. This was after the incoming government of President Viktor Yushchenko cancelled a 2004 auction that had seen the company sold at a much lower price to a consortium that included the son-in-law of ex-President Leonid Kuchma.The Indian-owned international steel conglomerate Mittal Steel proved successful with a bid of $4.8 billion (equivalent to a fifth of Ukraine's national budget). In 2006, Mittal took over its international rival, Arcelor, to form ArcelorMittal headquartered in Luxembourg City. Since then the company says its has invested more than $5 billion in its Kryvyi Rih operations.^[9]

On 15 October 2020, in an action that began with 393 miners occupying mine-shafts, 18 iron-ore miners came to the surface after spending a total of 43 days underground to protest pay and conditions. The mine administration had introduced piecework wages for most jobs underground, linking people's daily income to the amount of ore mined. In response to this, and to above-ground worker blockades, plant management made concessions on wages, benefits and health and safety.

2022 Russian invasion

On the first day of the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, 24 February 2022, there were air strikes against military targets in the city. According to Ukrinform, the city council's website announced that: "Residents of Makulan [district] and the surrounding sector are being asked to evacuate immediately following air attacks on the warehouses of the armored brigade. The ammunition is smoldering there - explosions and scattering are possible".

On 27 February city mayor Oleksandr Vilkul was appointed the head of the military administration of Kryvyi Rih. According to Vilkul, the day previously--the second day the war--the Russians had attempted an air assault. An Ilyushin Il 76 transport had approached an abandoned Soviet-era air base just east of the ciity. Carrying more than 100 paratroopers with orders to capture the airfield as an “air bridge”, it was forced to abort its mission at 300 metres. As soon as the city had been hit with missiles local defenders had blocked the runway with mechanical equipment.^{[10] [11]} On the same day, Vikul said that he had received a phone call with a former colleague who invited him to "sign an agreement of friendship, cooperation and defense with Russia"; he said that he "responded with profanity."

On the third day of the war, 27 February, the Russians, according to Vilkul, sent a column of 300 military vehicles from their advancing position to the south, and that after ten days of intense fighting they were turned back. As an industrial center that accounted for fully 10% of Ukraine's GDP, Vilkul was convinced that for the Russian Kryvyi Rih was a prime target.

On 11 March Los Angeles Times reported that Russian troops had broadened their offensive across Ukraine in the third week of the war and were again advancing toward Kryvyi Rih from the south. On 10 March, two rockets struck the Kryvyi Rih International Airport in . On 12 March Metinvest was reported to have shuttered an open pit iron ore mine in the city, and to have sent the huge trucks used at the mine to block key roads to slow the Russian advance. In its 15 March briefing, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence stated that the movement by "occupation troops" toward Kryvyi Rih had been stopped. On 19 March, the head of the city's military administration Vilkul reported that the Russian had shelled the village of , 53 kilometers to the south, but were not advancing on Kryvyi Rih. According to Russian sources, the invaders face extensive improvised fortifications and minefields. On 29 March, Vilkul said that the line of contact was no longer on the border with Dnipropetrovsk region, but 40-60 kilometes south in the Kherson Oblast. He was confident, in any case, that running 120km north to south, the longest city in Europe could not be surrounded.^[11]

On 30 March, ArcelorMittal which at the beginning of the month had idled its steelmaking operations in Kryvyi Rih citing concern for the safety and security of its 26,000 workers and for its assets, announced that it was preparing to restart production.

On 2 April, Vilkul reported that the Russians fired multiple rocket launchers at Kryvyi Rih's southern-most outskirts, the Inhuletskyi District. Only a few hours before he had again announced that everything was calm in the region, and that the fighting had shifted to the neighboring Kherson region. On May 25th Russia conducted 3 missile strikes at industrial enterprise in Kryvyi Rih, significant destruction reported. On May 28, a Russian bomb hit civilian infrastructure. In late May Ukrainian forces have made limited counter attacks south of Kryvyi Rih. Making unverified claims of Russian losses including a Su-35. Russia has also claimed to have destroyed a large Ukrainian arsenal in the area of Kryvyi Rih, using missiles. On June 18th 13:11 two missiles hit the Inhulets district, 2 people were wounded according to the millitary representetive Vilkul. On July 9th there were 2 misslie attacks: on the morning the Inhulets District got shelled, while evening the neighborhood Radushne was being bombed. Two civilians got killed.

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