Founded in 1933, the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works and its adjacent industrial zone is a city within a city. It is one of the largest steel plants in Europe. The area of almost 11 square kilometres. Before the war, about 11 thousand people worked at Azovstal.

It is known that out of 11 thousand of Azovstal employees only about 4 500 people left Mariupol and got in touch to know their whereabouts," said Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Holding, which owns the plant in Mariupol.

More than 6,500 people were killed and missing.

Russian troops destroyed the plant in three months of bombardment. Denys Pushylin, the so-called "head of the DPR," said that Azovstal's plant in Mariupol would be demolished.