A city for life or for death? A report from Kamianske, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast

Kamianske is a city with a colorful sky, squeezed between factories and with remnants of radioactive waste. Two-thirds of the residents commute to Dnipro every day, the rest work in factories or in commerce, and men here often do not live to be 50 years old.

However, in recent years, Kamianske has come back to life – the industrial giant Metinvest has entered the city, and after the start of the full-scale invasion, about 30,000 displaced people have arrived here.

LIGA.net visited Kamianske and learned about the lives and hopes of its residents.

"What will happen when the factory is built?"

It's snowy in Kamianske, with a temperature of -10 degrees Celsius. A tram slowly makes its way along the central streets from the station to the city center. Shop windows display signs like "Power banks, blankets, and pillows in stock." In one of the apartments, two parrots can be seen huddled together, seeking refuge from the cold.

White smoke billows from the tall chimneys in the center. The air literally feels heavy. A chemical plant, a coke plant, and the Azot plant, radioactive waste storage facilities – the city is literally squeezed between industrial enterprises. But the most important of all is the plant standing right in the center, around which Kamianske grew – the Dnipro Metallurgical Combine.

In 2021, the company became part of the Metinvest Group and soon received a new name – Kamet-Steel. The plant manufactures armor plates, shelters and underground facilities, medical and military structures, anti-drone and anti-mine systems, armored vehicles and shields, and its steel is used for army ammunition and equipment.

Currently, eight thousand people work here; this enterprise is the largest employer in the city. Some of the workers, whose salaries allow it (the average salary here is 32 thousand hryvnias), are reserved, and over 800 employees serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The area of the plant is 806 hectares, which is equal to the territory of a small city or the size of over a thousand football fields.

"Tea, coffee? Birch sap, cappuccino? Put on your helmet, goggles, and gloves, and let's go!" smiles Ihor, a 51-year-old tall and thin man named Ihor, the foreman of the rolling shop.

In his workshop, they make wire rod – a semi-finished product from which wire, ropes, cables, nails, self-tapping screws, screws, and other things are then made. At the entrance to the huge room, Ihor exchanges a few words with the foreman, who spent the night in the "monkey cage" because "the TCC (Territorial Recruitment Center) picked him up." But they figured out that he had a deferment and let him go.

Igor gives us a tour of the workshop; steam is coming out of his mouth. At the entrance to the premises, Kamet-Stal workers have decorated a New Year's tree.

"I've been working here for 28 years," the foreman says. "I was born here, in Dniprodzerzhynsk (the city's name from 1936 to 2016. – LIGA.net), and I've found my purpose here. Although, I call it by its proper name now – Kamianske, because Dzerzhynsky was a bad person. I drive to work in my own car, and the guys (my subordinates, – LIGA.net) are brought to the checkpoint by the company bus. I have a wife and a child. What do I do after work? Nothing much. We went to the mall, did some shopping. Well, a couple of days ago we went to the movies, with those glasses (a 3D screening, – LIGA.net). We don't have electricity at home, so at least we saw something there."

Ihor continues: the war affects the enterprise most of all due to the lack of electricity. At Kamet-Stal, there are sharp voltage drops almost every day, which the workers call "sagging". They lead to emergency shutdowns of equipment and even fire hazards: due to voltage fluctuations, mechanisms overheat, and local fires occur. A production stoppage means missed shipment deadlines, which automatically entails penalties. In the last week alone, there have been two blackouts at the plant, when work completely stopped. But the employees extinguish local "fires" and try to quickly resume work, because "if we don't fulfill the plan, the plant won't get money. If we don't get money, it means we will fill the budget less."

Kamet-Stal is the main source of budget replenishment for Kamianske. In total, since the full-scale war began, the plant has paid almost eight billion hryvnias in taxes to budgets of all levels in Ukraine. In 2025, Metinvest financed the Kamianske City Council with 55 million hryvnias, which will be used to eliminate the consequences of the city's missile attack. July last year, when hospital departments, a maternity hospital, educational institutions, and 49 residential buildings were damaged; and paid for five new tram cars for the city for 34 million hryvnias.

Igor, a foreman in the rolling mill, continues: he undergoes a medical examination every year; the work, according to him, does not affect his health. However, he looks much older than his age.

"I have four people under my command," says Igor. "One of my men died, he was a good craftsman, hit by a shrapnel at the front. My cousin is also fighting. The company has reserved me for now, but who knows what will happen next? But someone has to work, right? To earn money for the army, to support the state. If the factory closes, what will happen?"

Since the full-scale invasion began, 52 employees have died at the Kamet-Stal plant. Many women have come to the factories to replace the mobilized men; there are now over 2,600 of them. 142 people have returned from the war and continued to work at the enterprise.

"Vanya, the ground is subsiding!" one of the workers shouts to his boss.

"Well, it happens," Vanya replies, quickening his pace and hurrying to the "emergency" center.

In the center of the room, there is a fire. Liquid metal at a temperature of 1500°C has caught fire. Around it are five people in protective clothing and helmets, calling out to each other loudly as they try to put out the fire. They succeed in about seven minutes.

To avoid large-scale fires in the absence of electricity, Kamet-Stal built a gas piston power plant in 2025, allowing the company to generate its own electricity and be less dependent on the city. This is enough to stop equipment and prevent emergency situations in the event of a "sag" or absence of electricity. The plans include building its own solar power plant.

"This city needs to understand: is it for life or for death?"

Local urban planner and architect Anna Huskova says that back in the 90s, statistics showed that the life expectancy in Kamianske was the lowest in Ukraine. This was especially true for men, whose average age of death was 48.

Anna was born in Kamianske and finished school there. Since childhood, she drew houses and dreamed of becoming an interior designer. Then she entered the Faculty of Architecture in Dnipro, lived there for ten years, and eventually returned to work in Kamianske. We meet in a local food bar on a snowy evening. Anna arrived with her laptop and constantly shows a map of the city to visually explain what she is talking about. She traces her finger on the map: now we are located between Kamet-Stal and the chemical plant, very close, near the Dnipro River, is a radioactive waste tailings pond.

"By the way, speaking of Dnipro, but not the river, I mean the city," Anna seems to recall. "Two-thirds of Kamianske's population commutes there for an hour every day for work. The salaries are higher and the working conditions are better there because it's practically a different reality compared to Kamianske, whereas here at the factory, they only pay the minimum to keep their exemption from military service. The other part of the townspeople work at local factories or in shops and cafes. Speaking of cafes, we don't really like drinking coffee on the patio. Every day, several millimeters of graphite petroleum dust 'fall' here, and in a week, that's a centimeter of graphite. That's why waiters have to wipe the tables very often to remove the grayish dust."

In Kamianske, Anna is involved in urban and environmental projects: she works on spatial planning, the development of green spaces, and the integration of data for transparency in local policy.

The city grew around its industries, but times are changing. And the city must change too. That is, it must decide what it wants to be, and what needs to be rethought for that, says the urban planner.

On social media, Anna talks about her projects and is not afraid to criticize the decisions of local authorities. In turn, she also responds to the urban planner with "love": Anna says that posts with slander about her regularly appear in local pro-government Telegram channels.

Currently, Kamianske is about people who still carry this mental pattern inherited from the Soviet Union: you don't stick out, you don't express dissatisfaction, you work in a city at a factory or in the service sector. We don't say: people in Kamianske work in IT companies, we don't talk about any technological giants.

In Kamianske, there are many kiosks and almost no green spaces. An urban planner talks about the local central park, which has the status of a monument of landscape architecture and a nature reserve, but is being built up with kiosks, rope parks, and playgrounds.

"On the central avenue – Svobody Avenue – they are going to build a McDonald's," Anna says. "A McDonald's can be there. But not instead of a public garden. In an industrial city, where several millimeters of graphite fall on you every day. A good public garden is a dust absorber and a cool green area."

Kamianske, also known as Dniprodzerzhynsk, also known as Dresden, also known as Dniprodym, also known as Dym — a city that Anna loves and at the same time painfully perceives every one of its shortcomings. Currently, no more than ten factories operate here at full capacity, although there used to be over 60, but the city's appearance has not visually changed much from the USSR and the "noughties" over the decades. Residents are inert and indifferent to urban processes, barely influencing their course. A lot of Russian is spoken on the streets, and the older generation still associates the city with the Soviet leader Brezhnev, who was born here. However, Anna sees potential in the city.

In Kamianske, "a healthy city," neglected industrial spaces should be transformed into green spaces with, for example, a McDonald's and a technopark, Anna believes. A "healthy city" in Kamianske also means efficient public transport, clear cycling infrastructure, a leading university where people will want to study and come from other cities, and post-industrial spaces that are tourist magnets.

"Last year, I rescued a cat and needed to take it to its new owners," Anna recalls. "I didn't have any cash with me and found myself on the left bank, realizing I needed to find an ATM to get home. The city has minibuses, buses, and trams, but you can only pay with a QR code on the tram. We spend money to maintain a very long tram network. But the branch that goes through the factories, where almost no one works anymore, how many people does it serve? That's a rhetorical question. But still, from an urban planning and accessibility perspective, our tram is just a way to get to the next mode of transport, because from the stops, you still have to walk for 15-20 minutes."

One of the problems in Kamianske is the high level of radiation. During the Soviet era, the Prydniprovsky Chemical Plant, which processed uranium, operated here. After the collapse of the USSR, the plant closed, but the radioactive waste did not disappear. Tailings ponds are essentially large pits with a concrete base that were supposed to isolate radiation from the soil, water, and air. However, their lifespan has long been exhausted, and no one has updated them for decades. As a result, radioactive dust is carried by the wind into the city, and with rain and groundwater, it enters the Dnipro River.

"Regarding the study on life expectancy. We have districts where not only people don't live long, but animals don't live long either," says Guskova. "Our acquaintances from the Zavodsky district didn't have time to treat their pets. They treat them, the animal gets sick, they treat it, the animal dies, and these are all sorts of diseases. After the collapse of the USSR, it was difficult for men to find their place in the new reality. They worked at the factory and found solace in alcohol. And so, they died in their early 40s."

If Kamianske is also liberated like this, there will be nothing left here.

Since 2022, Kamianske has become a city of refuge for over 30,000 people from eastern Ukraine. Olena and Oleksii are a couple from Sloviansk in the Donetsk region – lecturers at the Sloviansk College of Industry and Pharmacy. Oleksii is a tall, thin, serious man, while Olena is a constantly smiling woman who speaks Ukrainian with a noticeable Armenian accent. She grew up in the Caucasus and never studied Ukrainian, but she made a point of speaking it from the beginning of the Russian invasion.

Olena and Oleksiy have been married for 32 years, and their adult daughter lives in Kyiv. In 2014, the couple had already left Sloviansk, but only for a couple of weeks. They hoped it would be the same this time. However, they have been in Kamianske for almost four years now.

The family chose the city to live in so that they could be closer to their college, which was relocated to Dnipro. Thirty members of the college staff also moved to Kamianske.

"There were five of us who left – me, Olena, my parents, and her aunt," Oleksiy says. "Our daughter found us a house through acquaintances, where we live to this day and only pay for utilities. And I want to tell you that finding housing in Kamianske now is much harder and more expensive than it was in 2022. For the entire city, there are only about 200 housing offers, because there are many displaced people and people who came to work at the enterprises."

In 2022, the couple recalls, the war in Kamianske was not felt as it is now. Back then, air raid sirens blared incessantly for the first few months, but otherwise life went on as usual, while in Sloviansk, cannon fire could be heard. Now, Kamianske is no longer so calm. The city is frequently attacked by Russian missiles and drones. As throughout the country, the lights are turned off.

"Kamianske is like two cities: Kramatorsk and Sloviansk combined," Olena smiles. "There are many shops here, and also a very good theater. Sloviansk doesn't have such a theater. But what we experienced firsthand were the environmental issues. You go outside, and your clothes immediately turn pink-purple. The sky is multicolored: white, black, and reddish smoke billows out simultaneously. Wherever the wind blows, that district 'gets lucky.' The Dnipro River is constantly green. And once in the summer, we ate a pear from the garden and the whole family got poisoned... My nine-year-old nephew even had to be taken to the hospital and given an IV drip. And we hadn't treated that pear with anything, it was just something in the air..."

Currently, Olena and Oleksiy are working from home – their college classes are online. They live in a private house in the Zavodskyi district of Kamianske. After classes, Olena goes to a women's sports club every day, a chain she also attended in Sloviansk. There, she has made new friends. Oleksiy has almost no free time; he only breaks up his weekdays with trips to Dnipro for work. Otherwise, he is at home, tending to the garden and looking after his parents.

"There are other issues in Kamianske," Oleksiy says. "We live on a street where residents don't pay for garbage collection. There are simply no containers there, and the garbage truck doesn't go there. So, there's a ravine there. And all the locals dump their garbage into it. In the summer, it sometimes catches fire. If the environmental problems were solved, if garbage recycling was implemented, Kamianske would be a very good city to live in."

When the war is over, Olena and Oleksiy would like to return to Sloviansk to rebuild their damaged home. Although Olena likes living near the Dnipro River, their home is in Sloviansk.

"Despite everything, you can feel that Kamianske is Ukraine," the woman says. "When defenders are being buried, people stop and kneel. Unfortunately, there are also those who are waiting to be 'liberated.' There aren't many of them here, but they exist. Once, Oleksiy and I were in a sauna, talking with other people about what they would do if the front line got closer. And some woman said, 'Why leave? What difference does it make who's here?' They just don't understand how 'liberated' Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar are now, and how Kostiantynivka is being 'liberated.' If Kamianske is 'liberated' like that, there will be nothing left here."

***

-Kat, are the TCC officers still walking around?

– I don't know…

– Did you see the reception near Liverpool?

– Near Paradise?

– Yes. Make coffee, I'm going to smoke.

The dialogue takes place in a cafe near the Kamianske-Pasazhyrske railway station. In the waiting room, a girl stands with a large pixel-patterned backpack and in a Ukrainian Armed Forces uniform. Her parents came to see her off on the train; she complains that her boots are too big and that it's cold in the barracks now. A train arrives on the track, her parents hug their daughter and stand there for another five minutes after it has departed.