Yenakiieve, also Yenakiyevo is a city and the nominal administrative center of Yenakiieve urban hromada in the Horlivka Raion, within the Donetsk Oblast of eastern Ukraine. The city stands on the Krynka River about 60 kilometres (37 mi) from the oblast's administrative center, Donetsk. Its population is approximately 76,673 (2022 estimate), making it the seventh-most populous city in Donetsk Oblast and the 43rd-most populous city in Ukraine.
The city originally started off under the name of Fyodorovka, which gained notoriety in 1895 when it was chosen as the site of the Petrovsky plant, which would become Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works. In 1898, the settlement was merged to make the settlement of Yenakiieve, named after the founder of the Petrovsky plant, Fyodor Yegorovich Yenakiev. After the October Revolution, it was claimed by the Soviet Union. In 1925, the settlement was granted city status. The city was renamed twice to Rykovo in 1928 and then Ordzhonikidze in 1937, before being changed back to its original name of Yenakiieve after World War Two. After World War Two, the city continued to grow as a major industrial hub, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union became part of an independent Ukraine. In 2014, during the War in the Donbas, the city came under the control of pro-Russian separatists, who incorporated it into the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. After a highly disputed referendum, the region was annexed by Russia in 2022. As of 2026, Russia has full control of the city.
Yenakiieve remains a large industrial centre in the region of the Donbas, specifically in ferrous metallurgy and mining. The largest employer is the steelmaking Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works alongside the Yenakiieve Coke-Chemical Plant. However, the city's outdated industry has also caused notable accidents, such as that of the 2008 Ukraine coal mine collapse. Cultural landmarks include Lenin Square, the mass grave of Red Army soldiers, and a monument to cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy. There are two museums in the city, those being the Yenakiieve Historical Museum and a museum dedicated to Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works. The city was also formerly home to FC Pivdenstal Yenakiieve, which played in the Ukrainian Amateur Cup, with its home games being at Metalurh Stadium. However, it was disbanded in 2005. The city is also best known internationally as the birthplace of the former President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who was in office from 2010 to 2014 until his ousting following months of protests during the Revolution of Dignity, alongside his son, who was a People's Deputy of Ukraine from 2006 to 2014.
Name
Current names
Name history
The original name of the city when it was founded was Fyodorovka, meaning "Fyodor's village". The name comes from the first name of Fyodor Yegorovich Yenakiev, who founded the Petrovsky plant in the territory of Fyodorovka in 1895 together with other Belgian businessmen. The Petrovsky plant would later become the enterprise of Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works, one of the oldest and largest metallurgical factories of Ukraine. In 1898, when the settlement of Fyodorovka was merged with the other surrounding settlements around the plant to create a singular settlement, the new name of the city became Yenakiieve. Like its predecessor's name, the name is also derived from Fyodor Yegorovich Yenakiev, but this time, coming from his surname to mean "place of Yenakiev". This name would remain for decades until 1928, when it was changed to Rykovo to honour Alexei Rykov, the then Premier of the Soviet Union. Rykovo would not last long, however, as in 1937 Rykov was arrested together with Nikolai Bukharin and accused of treason during the Great Purge, eventually leading to his execution. Due to this, in late 1937, the city was renamed from Rykovo to Ordzhonikidze after another Soviet leader, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who was People's Commissar of Heavy Industry.
After the Soviets regained the city after a two-year occupation during World War II, the name was again changed from Ordzhonikidze back to the original name of Yenakiieve that was in use from 1898 to 1928. This was possibly in correlation with the beginning of the Russification campaign by Soviet authorities. The name of Yenakiieve would remain for the rest of the Soviet era, and continues to be in use since Ukrainian independence.
History
Imperial city
Permanent settlement around the site of present-day Yenakiieve arose at the end of the late 18th century with the small village of Fyodorovka (Fedorovka), which was specifically founded on the Bulavin River. The small settlement was at least mentioned in the "Lists of Populated Places of the Russian Empire", where it recorded 18 people at the end of the century. At the time of its settlement, Fyodorovka belonged to the Yekaterinoslav Viceroyalty, which soon after became the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. The small settlement started attracting attention in 1858, when near it the Sofiyevsky coal mine was built alongside a pig iron plant on the Sadki River known as "Petrovsky" after Peter I (now in Staropetrovskoye. However, the Petrovsky plant would not last for long as state funding stopped. After the failure of Petrovsky, it was decided to relocate the plant to the village of Fedorovka, which began operations in 1897 with two blast furnaces. This new plant would eventually become the enterprise of Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works. Parallel to this, new coal mines known as Verovsky, Naryevsky, and Bunge were opened up to connect to the plant by the Krinichnaya to Khatsapetovka railway line. The railway line was served by the new station of Yenakiieve, which was named after engineer Fyodor Yegorovich Yenakiev, who helped open the new Petrovsky plant in 1895 together with B. Yalovetsky and several other Belgian businessmen as a Russian-Belgian metallurgical company.
As people moved to the territory of Fedorovka to work at the plant, numerous settlements grew around the Yenakiieve railway station, with the area having a population of around 15,000 by 1898. In 1898, it was decided to merge the settlements around the railway station and Fedorovka into a single settlement known as Yenakiievsky (also after Yenakiev). The new settlement garnered some attention with the publication of the novella entitled "Moloch" in 1896 by a worker at the plant, A.I. Kurpin, which alleged that the conditions were harsh with 12 to even 15-hour work days and that there were no safety restrictions. In 1899, a new social democratic circle popped up around the plant, with leaflets being distributed by the RSDLP. In 1904, the circle became a part of RSDLP formally. Yenakiieve also soon became embroiled in the Russian Revolution of 1905. Both protests and strikes began, and in November 1905, the first Soviet in the Donbas was created in the settlement, which was headed by local RSDLP leader G. F. Tkachenko-Petrenko. While discussions of an uprising did take place, the detachments of the new Soviet mainly focused on aiding the nearby Horlivka uprising and fighting with Cossacks in that area. In retaliation, many of the members of the Soviet were hanged for participating in the Horlivka uprising.
Yenakiieve continued to rapidly grow despite this as the Petrovsky plant had risen to third place in output volume in the south of the Russian Empire, and new plants were built on its enterprises. In 1912, the Soviet-backed Pravda alleged that despite the rapid growth, the settlement was "hideous" and covered in mud, with people crammed in barracks.
Soviet era
October Revolution
After the October Revolution, Grigory Petrovsky was sent to Yenakiieve in order to attempt to garner support for the Bolsheviks and thus the Soviet Union, which by October had around 2,844 registered members. Also, on 16 June 1917, the settlement received the status of city (previously, only three settlements had had the status of city in Donetsk Oblast), which also granted a city duma of 42 people proportionate to the population. Most of the dumas were liquidated for zemstvos in January 1918, although Yenakiieve's remained. In December 1917, the Russo-Belgian Metallurgical Society, which owned the Petrovsky plant, was also nationalised into the Petrovsky State Plants and Mines.
Russian Civil War
After the start of the Russian Civil War, it was reported by Soviet sources that around three thousand Yenakiev residents had joined detachments of the Red Guard, obtaining weapons from Petrograd to fight the White movement under Alexey Kaledin. On 7 November 1917, the city was annexed by the Ukrainian People's Republic, and shortly thereafter under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Austro-German troops entered the city after the Battle of Yenakiieve on 18 April 1918. During the Austro-German occupation, an underground Bolshevik committee continued to operate within the city. As Austro-Hungary began to collapse in November 1918 amid the German Revolution, Yenakiieve started striking again, which led the Hetmanate police to retreat while the German garrison stationed in the city behaved passively except for calling 100 Cossack troops.
In the midst of the unrest, on 28 March 1919, the Red Army recaptured Yenakiieve using the 13th Army after having driven out White forces who had retreated from Khatsapetovka to Krinichnaya. Just a few months later, though, in April 1919, the White Army took control of the city, and it became the headquarters of the 1st officer Regiment named for General Markov, which had 1,100 soldiers and was led by Colonel Salnikov. This was done in order to protect the Donets Basin and the railway from Yuzivka to Mariupol from Soviet attacks. A few months later, on 29 December 1919, the 1st Cavalry Army of the Soviet Army again took control over Yenakiieve from the White movement, which would be the last time the city switched hands during the war.
Post-war, Holodomor, and Great Purge
Yenakiieve, which lost most of the Donbas, was heavily affected by the Russian Civil War. Of the 63 blast furnaces that were present across southern Ukraine, only one at the Yenakiieve plant remained in operation, resuming operations immediately after the last expulsion of White forces. In the aftermath, the city would become one of the leading industrial producers again, already smelting 10 million poods of ferrous metal in 1922. All the mines in the city were renamed in 1924 to follow communisation. During the first five-year plan from 1928 to 1932, work was done on the reconstruction of the city's enterprises, and mechanised coal extraction reached 70%. During this time, the city also became a large agricultural center through the satellite villages nearby during collectivisation. During the prewar Five-Year Plans, around 260,500 square metres of housing in total were built along with sewage and water-supply infrastructure. During this time, the city was also renamed from Yenakiieve in 1928 to Rykovo, after Soviet statesman Alexei Rykov. However, the name would not remain long, as in 1937 the city was again renamed to Ordzhonikidze after another Soviet leader, Sergo Ordzhonikidze. The name was changed from Rykovo after Rykov's arrest in 1937 during the Great Purge.
During the Holodomor, brigades searched households in the city for hidden grain and seed stock and seized foodstuff, with those caught concealing food being sentenced to prison. Documents from this time period within the Donetsk Oblast State Archive allege that brigades broke into homes and put kolkhozs on a "black list" if they failed to meet grain quotas, thus cutting them off from trade. Archival reports also allege widespread starvation by 1932, which led to isolated acts of resistance and anti-Soviet slogans. Like the rest of the USSR, the city was also affected by the Great Purge from 1937-38, with victims of the purges coming from all backgrounds in Yenakiieve. Nevertheless, the local newspaper Znamya Udarnika reported at the time that local rallies endorsed the show trials during the purge by Vasiliy Ulrikh and Andrey Vyshinsky.
World War II
Upon the outbreak of World War II, many residents left to serve in the Red Army. After the start of Operation Barbarossa, the 8th Department of the 18th Army, which became based in Krasnodon after the Battle of Kiev, began preparations to organise underground partisan detachments in the Ukrainian SSR including in Yenakiieve. As German troops were advancing, the main plant and its specialists were evacuated from the city to Polunochnoye in the Urals. Most of the city's plants were not operational in the Urals until mid-1942 due to a shortage of alloys that were made in Nikopol. During World War II Yenakiieve was under siege from Italian army auxiliary units that were seconded to the German Army. They were followed by German units. Street fighting was fierce between the end of November and the beginning of December 1941.
During the occupation, “Recruitment” of civilians as Ostarbeiter began in December 1941. Yenakiieve did have a partisan unit, which had been planned to work with Krasnodon under a shared operational structure. Partisans received weapons from hidden caches, with recruits receiving training from a NKVD school hidden in Lysychansk. The partisan detachment was led by Pyotr Makarovich Kompaniyets, and it worked with the 15th Rifle Division, who were stuck in a grey area nearby during the winter of 1941. They participated in joint operations on Savelivka, which attacked a German position, and individual sabotage was done within the city, including the burning down of German housing.
As German forces retreated in late 1943, Yenakiieve was finally liberated from Nazi troops on 3 September 1943. Soviet troops had advanced into Yenakiieve after liberating Snizhne after a battle at the height of Savur-Mohyla. The troops involved in the liberation in September were all rifle divisions, consisting of the 34th division, 40th division, 320th, and the 4th. In 1950, about twelve Italian POWs (prisoners of war) were put on trial, over atrocities in Yenakiieve including the destruction of a hospital. Apparently no convictions were registered, and by 1954 all Italian POWs were returned to Italy.