In 1870, John James Hughes, a Welsh entrepreneur, sailed from Britain at the head of eight ships. The load consisted of metallurgical equipment, while the passengers included close to a hundred skilled miners and metalworkers. Most of them, like Hughes himself, came from Wales. Their destination was the steppe on the Donets River in southern Ukraine, north of the Sea of Azov. The expedition aimed to construct a full-cycle metallurgical plant. “When I commenced these works, I set my mind upon training of the Russian workmen who would be attached to the place,” wrote Hughes later. The project took several years. With the help of unskilled Ukrainian and Russian labor, Hughes and his crew soon built not only iron-smelting and rail works but also a small town around them. These were the beginnings of Yuzivka, today’s Donetsk, till recently a city of more than a million people and the main center of the Donbas—the Donets River industrial basin.
Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe.
