As part of Moscow’s ongoing missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and workplaces, Russian military forces attacked the mining towns of Dobropillia April 30 and Pavlohrad April 25, where three were killed and 15 injured. The Pavlohrad coal complex is the largest mine in Ukraine.
The mine rescue headquarters in Dobropillia was hit around 5 a.m. “There were about 30 people on duty. One person was injured, others suffered trauma, though considering the scale of the attack, it’s a miracle that no one was killed,” said Mykhailo Volynets, president of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine. What the Russian forces do is launch “kamikaze drones at the mines and then strike the rescuers who are on standby, ready to respond to calls for help.”
Dobropillia is only 12 miles from the front. On March 7, a massive missile, artillery and drone attack there killed 11 people and injured 49.
Many Ukrainian miners volunteered for the army at the onset of war, with more joining or being conscripted since. Steel plants and coal mines face growing shortages of workers. “Ukraine’s mining towns are an essential link of the dwindling supply chain keeping the national steelworks industry afloat,” NPR said in December. The industry is running at “around a third of the output level before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.”
“In just the first four months of 2025, Russia has attacked with missiles and kamikaze drones enterprises and infrastructure employing thousands of our trade union colleagues in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Pavlohrad, Kamianske, Pokrovsk, Kryvyi Rih, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia and other cities,” the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine said in a statement issued on May 1, International Workers Day.
“But we are not ready to surrender our land, our cities, or our people to the enemy, because we know that Russia has systematically implemented a regime of terror and violated civil liberties and human rights, including labor rights, in the territories it occupies.”