- The city grew up around the works built in 1869 by John Hughes, a Merthyr Tydfil industrialist who landed a contract from the Tsarist government to provide steel plating for the navy. He sailed with 100 ironworkers and miners, mostly from South Wales. The Hughes factory gave its name to the settlement which grew in its shadow, Hughesovka (Yuzovka). Under Soviet rule, the city’s name was changed to Stalino and, in 1961, it gained its current name, after the Donets river.
- Despite being an industrial and mining centre, in 1970 it was named ‘the city of one million roses’ in honour of its well-tended parks. After the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when parks were trampled by market traders, the city council launched a planting campaign which brought the rose total back up to 1,012,000 bushes.
5 things: Donetsk, a city of a million roses
