I heard this legend a long time ago, but I always thought that this was just one of the terrible tales about Donbass, which had nothing to do with reality. The story was too crazy to believe, but it turned out to be absolutely true.

Legend has it that a huge metal monument to the metallurgist, installed at the entrance to Mariupol, served (or still serves) as a target for local bandits who, driving past it on the highway, always shot from the windows of their cars at the statue. And sometimes they drove out onto the highway at night after a long revelry in taverns and shot at the monument with bursts of machine gun fire.

I was told about the executed metallurgist back at the university, but there was still no reason to go to Mariupol and look at the statue. But I managed to go to Mariupol and take pictures with Pavel Kolesnik . And it turned out that the Mariupol steelmaker was riddled with bullets from head to toe.

This is what he looks like from a distance

And so close. It seems as if the face is pitted with pockmarks. In fact, these are traces of machine gun fire.

They cover the entire sculpture, although they shot most closely at the head

The monument to the Mariupol metallurgist is also a monument to our nineties. I would include it in some authentic excursion. To be afraid. Let them know ours.

The scary tale about the metallurgist turned out to be true