Running a small business is hard work at the best of times. Throw in a full scale war, including a Russian missile strike that damages your factory, and the job gets even harder.
Fadir Tools, an artisan toolmaker in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, has had a tricky war. When the Russians invaded Ukraine in February 2022, owner Serhii Ivin, 41, closed the factory, picked up his pump action shotgun and headed for the main administrative building to help defend the city. A couple of nights later a Russian rocket landed just down the hall. He spent the next few weeks holed up in the basement.
Despite joining up full-time as part of a Ukrainian army scouting unit, Ivin decided to reopen the forge three months into the war, leaving his foreman in charge of the day-to-day running of the business, which makes hand-forged axes, carving knives and other woodworking tools.
Fadir is one of thousands of firms across Ukraine that are still open for business, keeping the country’s economy running, despite the numerous challenges the war has brought.
“We pay salaries and we pay taxes, and it is important we should carry on,” Ivin said during a brief spell of leave from the frontline. “Someday the war will end. We want to save this place and this business and we want to save the team, because people want to eat, they want to have a future. And the rest of the world needs tools.”
When they returned to the forge in May last year they found that a Russian missile had landed on one of the outbuildings in the sprawling compound of workshops, the shock wave destroying the roof of the main office.
After repairing the damage, their first task was to complete the 600 orders outstanding from before the war. “We had several people and we opened our factory and started to make those orders for clients who had already paid,” Ivin said.
With a much-reduced workforce, it took them until October to finish the work. The response from customers, most of of whom are in the US and western Europe, was mostly positive. “A few people wanted their money back, but most were happy to wait for their tools to be delivered, seeing it as a symbol of solidarity with Ukraine,” Ivin said. Some even asked for the money for their orders to be put towards the war effort. Others sent donations. “We used this money to spend on the unit, drones and things.”
On the day the Guardian visited, the forge was a hive of activity. In one of the workshops there was the deafening sound of craftsmen hammering red hot metal fresh from the furnace into the shape of axe heads; in another a worker was using a sandpaper belt to put a sharp edge on to the custom-made woodcarving knives.
But there was no disguising the challenge the business faces. “It is harder than before the war because people don’t trust to buy something from Ukraine, because they think the war is everywhere. It is hard for them to understand that Kharkiv is now mostly quiet. Missiles still hit, but life goes on,” said Ivin.
The online marketplace they were using even put a warning on their page about the perils of buying from Ukraine. In response they have launched their own online store to try and sell direct to customers.
Everyone who works at the factory has been affected by the war.
Sergei, 35, a leatherworker who makes the sheaths that protect the razor-sharp edges of the tools, was in Kharkiv at the beginning of the invasion, but the next day travelled 100km (62 miles) south-east to the town of Izium where his parents lived. Ten days later the town was occupied by Russian forces. He and his family spent the next nine months living in the basement before Ukrainian forces liberated the town. During that time the Russians searched the house twice. His brother and brother-in-law were serving in the Ukrainian military, but the Russians didn’t find their medals his parents had hidden. Sergei’s brother-in-law died fighting in Marinka in Donetsk oblast in June.
Four other workers are still serving in the Ukrainian army. One of the carpenters, who makes the ornate wooden handles for the tools, was injured in combat near the brutally contested city of Bakhmut in June when a mortar shell landed near him.
Andrei, 26, worked as an axe and knife sharpener. He joined a territorial defence unit and was killed in the battle for one of the villages east of Kharkiv in the first month of the invasion.
Raw materials are another issue. “We have some trouble with metal because before the war every high quality metal in Ukraine was from Russia – they [the suppliers] said it was from Belarus or Poland, but everyone knew where it was really from. Now the metal comes from Turkey and Europe, but the price is twice as much as before. But we need to work, so … ”
Russian customers, however, are less of a problem. “We used to sell a bit to Russia. They [still] write and ask to buy our tools but we say: ‘Go fuck yourselves!’”
