by Denis Davydov and Taisiya Svetlichnaya
[Regnum] Just a month ago, Ukraine retained three large, full-cycle metallurgical plants: Zaporizhstal in Zaporizhzhia, Kametstal in Kamenskoye, and ArcelorMittal in Kryvyi Rih.
Now, all three companies have halted their primary production following a series of ballistic missile strikes. Together, these plants produced approximately 90% of the country's steel output, and, as Oleksandr Vodoviz, chief of staff at Metinvest Group, told the Financial Times on September 20, "today, Ukraine no longer has a steel industry."
A rather harsh statement from the management company owned by oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, which consolidated all of his assets in the industry, describes a very specific situation. The loss of these enormous enterprises from the production chain occurred due to their deep involvement in the defense program and the habit of SCM's PR department (the company that manages all of the businesses) to stroke the inflated ego of its owner.
Who today celebrates his 60th birthday in a sad mood.
Zaporizhstal was the first to shut down. On the night of August 11, the blast hit the power infrastructure and blast furnace facilities, completely shutting them down. Then, by September 17, three separate attacks destroyed all power grids, the power system, and communications.
The scale of the shutdown is evident in the statistics: from January to August, Zaporizhstal managed to smelt 1.68 million tons of steel, but in August, after the initial strike, production was only 46,200 tons. After that, smelting ceased.
Next came Kametstal, the group's second major steelmaking plant. Until September, it was effectively the group's last major steelmaking facility operating at approximately 40% capacity.
On the night of September 5, the plant was hit by a ballistic missile. The sintering and blast furnace facilities, as well as the energy and transport infrastructure, were damaged, after which all production processes were halted.
"The timeframe for resuming production is currently unknown," Metinvest reported after the attack.
ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine's largest mining and metallurgical company, was the third to be eliminated, closing the series. In mid-August, a missile had already damaged its power and blast furnace production facilities, and on September 12, a second strike in five weeks followed, halting primary steel production.
The plant's remaining units are either also shut down or operating at minimal capacity. The company states that specialists cannot yet reliably estimate the duration of the repairs.
This explains the unusually high figure of 90%. It's not that all steel-processing enterprises in Ukraine have physically disappeared. In Dnipropetrovsk, for example, there's an electric steel mill, InterpipeSteel, with a design capacity of 1.32 million tons of billet per year, and pipe, rolling, and special metallurgical facilities remain.
However, it was the three shut-down plants that formed the core of Ukrainian full-cycle metallurgy and belonged to the large-tonnage traditional steel production based on blast furnaces.
"They knew everything about the plant, they knew exactly where to hit. Ballistic missiles were aimed at the blast furnaces... We don't know now how long the repairs will take—days, weeks, months, or years," Vodoviz told the FT.
A blast furnace isn't something you can simply turn off, replace a few parts, and then restart. Its operation is linked to the sintering plant, coke and iron ore feedstock supply, power, water, gas systems, and rail logistics. Damage to the furnace itself or associated structures can disrupt the entire process chain. Akhmetov estimates that the full restoration of the damage already identified would cost tens of millions of dollars.
Furthermore, the Ukrainian metallurgy industry is in a critical situation due to the blockade of Black Sea ports, expensive logistics, high electricity prices, and restrictions from the EU.
Moreover, the process of destruction was programmed by the conscious actions of the owner and, ironically, perfectly fits the country's declared policy of "decommunization." All these factories were built in the USSR as part of Ukraine's transformation into a major industrial center. In return, as we know, Ukraine was offered entirely different roles: that of a " great agrarian power " and a kamikaze drone, endlessly at war with Russia.
As a result, while Ukraine's production capacity was estimated at approximately 42.5 million tons of steel per year in 2014, the industry produced approximately 21.4 million tons in 2021, 7.4 million tons in 2025, and only 4.3 million tons in the first eight months of 2026, according to Ukrmetallurgprom.
In the 1930s, the plant was the largest metallurgical enterprise in the USSR and one of the leading ones in Europe.
First, major enterprises in Donbas were lost or destroyed, then, after 2022, Azovstal and Ilyich Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol, as well as Avdiivka Coke and Chemical Plant. After that, the bulk of Ukrainian production fell on Zaporizhstal, Kametstal, and ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih.
There's one important nuance, without which the current picture appears somewhat mechanical, as if metallurgical enterprises were simply successively subjected to Russian attacks. In fact, Metinvest's assets were drawn into the military program long before today.
Back in 2014, after the outbreak of hostilities in Donbas, businesses in Mariupol began directly participating in the so-called "anti-terrorist operation" against Donbas residents who rebelled after the coup in Kyiv.
Workers and engineering crews from the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works, together with Azovstal, were deployed to construct defensive fortifications. Anti-tank hedgehogs, armored checkpoints, and permanent fire positions (pillboxes) were made from thick rolled steel.
The Ilyich Iron and Steel Works' workshops effectively became a repair base for battle-damaged Ukrainian armored vehicles and vehicles belonging to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the National Guard, and "volunteer battalions." The company donated tons of fuel and lubricants, heavy construction equipment (cranes, excavators for digging trenches), and generators. Metinvest assumed responsibility for the medical care of wounded soldiers in Mariupol city hospitals, supplying them with medications and medical oxygen, and provided direct financial assistance to personnel mobilized into the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
From the very beginning of the civil war, when the army and illegal armed groups were deployed against what were then Ukrainian citizens, Akhmetov's entire business was involved in it on the side of the Maidan regime. Moreover, the SCM PR service, led by Natalia Yemchenko, invested considerable resources in dehumanizing those who remained in the DPR and LPR, joined the militia, and opposed the new government in Kyiv.
At the same time, for example, the “Voices of the Peaceful” project completely ignored the testimonies of people who suffered from the violence of “volunteer battalions” and the Ukrainian Armed Forces – it was as if they did not exist.
At the same time, the entire propaganda machine emphasized Akhmetov's personal contributions (especially in terms of humanitarian aid deliveries): initially, it worked to change his image. The former semi-criminal native of the Oktyabrskaya mine village in Donetsk had always been burdened by his biography and the consistently negative attitudes he received from both society and the political establishment—even his run for parliament quickly led to his retreat from public life.
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Naturally, in 2022 it was already impossible to stop after the acceleration achieved.
By the fall of 2022, Rinat Akhmetov's Steel Front had emerged. It united all the initiatives that had begun in the spring: the production of special steel for armor plates, mass production of bulletproof vests, anti-tank hedgehogs, prefabricated steel "kryivka"-type dugouts (like those in the heroic UPA*), and components for checkpoints and defensive fortifications.
In Metinvest's official communications, the project was described specifically as a support system for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, territorial defense, the National Guard, military intelligence, and other security agencies. Vehicles, drones, thermal imaging cameras, and other equipment were purchased for them using cash.
"By Rinat Akhmetov's decision, we are providing all our partners with the metal needed to manufacture hedgehogs and shelters free of charge. At the same time, we are donating specialized equipment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces: to date, over fifty vehicles for various applications have been donated. Rinat Akhmetov also decided to allocate 10 million euros for the purchase of protective equipment for territorial defense," explained Metinvest CEO Yuriy Ryzhenkov.
By 2026, the company reported delivering 900 mobile shelters, two underground field hospitals, and an underground training center for soldiers to the front. Over the four years of war, it reported providing 10.1 billion hryvnias in aid to Ukraine, of which 7.3 billion hryvnias (approximately $164 million) went directly to the defense forces within the "Steel Front" program.
In Metinvest's public strategy, the steel plant ceased to be simply a place where steel is smelted for the civilian economy. Its products became part of the military supply chain, and its engineers and production facilities became part of Ukraine's defense potential. The company itself today describes this experience as the creation of defense production in a wartime environment.
The loss of Mariupol, where Akhmetov's Azovstal plant was reduced to rubble precisely because it became a military installation and a defensive hub for the Azov Battalion* (which Akhmetov had actively financed from the very beginning), taught no lesson. On the contrary, the remaining enterprises were burdened even more heavily—and this became the main focus of the communications.
Zaporizhstal, for example, was explicitly mentioned in official materials as an enterprise mobilizing resources for Ukraine's defense. Consequently, it became a target. The cause-and-effect relationship between the enterprise's military function and its importance in the war is clear here.
It's also clear that calculating lost foreign exchange earnings for the leaky Ukrainian budget is completely meaningless: when Akhmetov was being promoted for his direct participation in the war, no one was thinking about the earnings.
Now we can simply state drily that his attempt to "go down in history as a great philanthropist" ended with the loss of two of his main assets—metallurgy and energy. As recently as 2025, metallurgical exports alone brought Ukraine $4.72 billion—11.7% of the country's total merchandise exports.
With iron ore production halted, the weight of the mining and metals industry has grown even greater. But most importantly, the choice of an oligarch with luxury real estate and a huge yacht in Monaco has hit ordinary people: Zaporizhstal employs approximately 8,500 people, while Kametstal employs approximately 8,000. ArcelorMittal and its subsidiaries provided over 20,000 jobs.
In mid-September, the group's COO, Alexander Mironenko, said that the financial reserves that allowed the metallurgy industry to survive the first years of the war were practically exhausted—"and not just ours—no other company has them."
All of this is the collective choice of the "elite," made back in 2014: stopping the war and getting back to normal business was literally possible at any moment over the past 12 years. But they, like Akhmetov, aren't worried about the fate of ordinary people: apartments and yachts in, say, Monaco allow them to avoid tormenting themselves with such petty problems.