Ruslana Prymasyuk: We were told that Irshansky GOK will be closed with a barn lock, 18 November 2022

One of the largest state-owned companies, United Mining and Chemical Company JSC remains one of the most closed to the public and the media. For almost 9 months of Russia's war against Ukraine, the official website of the company posted only three news reports, which give no information about the current state of the company or its performance. Back in spring, our sources in the company told us about a number of problems faced by UMCC: from logistics in a time of war to salary arrears and applying to banks for loans to pay them off. Officially, the company remained silent about the difficulties, and inquiries were ignored.

Ruslana Prymasyuk, the head of the trade union committee of Irshansk Mining and Processing Plant (a branch of the UMCC) reached out to NADRA.INFO news agency. It turned out that the real state of affairs and some important aspects of the company's activities are not only hidden from the media.

"As you can imagine, our equipment is not new, and no one has invested much in upgrades, there have been no billions of dollars in investments. The only thing that saved us and still saves us is that our guys are Kulibins, who went through everything they could and could not do, and made one working unit out of several faulty ones. But there is nothing left to go through."

"We do not understand what is really happening with our products. We do know that 20,000 tonnes of our ilmenite concentrate, which is a product of Irshansk GOK, was exported to Szczecin, Poland. The shipment started in August, I think. From open sources, we saw that our products crossed the border and are in Szczecin. But there is no money. Although we know that IGOK has always worked under contracts with 100% prepayment. And now we see that the cargo is supposedly already in Poland, but we are told that the company cannot sell it because it is not allowed to."

"Now we are being paid, but the salary is half of what we received before the full-scale invasion of Russia. All bonuses and allowances have been taken away from us - we receive a bare rate/salary."