Donetsk
The city of a million roses in eastern Ukraine
Donetsk – a major industrial, commercial and cultural center, is 800 km from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. The city is the capital of the Donetsk region and Donbas, and prior to the war in Donbas in 2014 it was the fifth most populous city in Ukraine. The city's economic potential was 193 industrial companies, 357 companies dealing with foreign trade, 383 construction companies, 1,550 service business, more than 13,000 small and medium enterprises.
Touristic Donetsk
The only thing that many people know of Donetsk, is that it has the
football team «Shakhtar». Despite the image of Donetsk as an industrial
city, it had many interesting things for tourists. The park of with
forged figures with gazebo for people in love, with the carousel, the
UEFA Cup and other creations by masters of hammer and anvil. And the
28-ton ball fountain of stone, where the ball is spinning on the water
jet. And Ukraine's largest rose garden in Shcherbakov Park.
Interesting for tourists were Sculpture Park «Ukrainian steppe» on
Pushkin Boulevard with works by Ukrainian and German artists and the
theme of old Slavic legends.
Donetsk's industrial potential
The industrial potential of Donetsk took 2nd place in the region in terms of industrial production (after Mariupol). In the city there is one of the largest free economic zones in Ukraine for investment «Donetsk». Together with the city of Makiivka, Donetsk was the largest industrial hub of the USSR. In Donetsk, the industry consists of metal industry (iron and other metals), coal, chemical (including coke) and heavy industry. In recent years light-, food- and wood industries as well as mechanical engineering have evolved.
Donetsk today
Until 2014, modern Donetsk could rightly be called one of Ukraine's most
significant cultural, scientific and business centers. Education is
conducted at 180 colleges, 38 higher education institutions, 24
vocational schools. Donetsk, famous for a million red roses, always
spent a lot of money on landscaping its territory. Donetsk participated
in the nationwide competition «The best city beautification» and won the
second place after Kyiv.
In April 1978, the population of Donetsk has exceeded one million
inhabitants, but in 2012, as a result of the demographic crisis,
population numbers fell sharply. Donetsk is de jure the administrative
center in the Donetsk region, which in April 2014 is de facto partly
(from 21 January 2015 – full) controlled by the unrecognized «Donetsk
People's Republic» (DPR), which sees the city as its capital.
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