Rinat Akhmetov saw that his business empire had been shattered by eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, but remained challenging, confident that what he called “our brave soldiers” would protect a city on the Sea of Azov turned into a wasteland by seven weeks of bombing.
For now, however, his company Metinvest, Ukraine’s largest steel producer, has said it cannot meet its supply contracts, and while its financial and industrial SCM Group is servicing its debt obligations, its private power producer DTEK is “optimizing its payment.” debts ”through an agreement with the creditors.
“Mariupol is a global tragedy and a world example of heroism. For me, Mariupol has been and will always be a Ukrainian city,” Akhmetov said in written answers to Reuters.
“I believe that our brave soldiers will defend the city, although I understand how difficult and difficult it is for them,” he said, adding that he was in daily contact with Metinvest managers who run the Azovstal and Ilich Ironworks plants in Mariupol.
On Friday, Metinvest said it would never work under Russian occupation and that the siege of Mariupol had deactivated more than a third of Ukraine’s metallurgical production capacity.
Akhmetov praised President Vladimir Zelensky’s “passion and professionalism” during the war, seemingly straightening relations after the Ukrainian leader said last year that conspirators hoping to overthrow his government had tried to lure the businessman.
Then Akhmetov called the statement an “absolute lie”.
“And the war is certainly not a time of controversy … We will rebuild all of Ukraine,” he said, adding that he returned to the country on February 23 and has been there ever since.
Marshall Plan for Ukraine
Akhmetov did not say exactly where he was, but that he was in Mariupol on February 16th, the day some Western intelligence services expected the invasion to begin. “I talked to people on the streets, I met with workers …” he said.
“My ambition is to return to Mariupol, Ukraine, and fulfill our (new production) plans so that Mariupol-produced steel can compete on world markets as before.”
Russia invaded on February 24, when President Vladimir Putin announced a “special operation” to demilitarize and “denationalize” the country. Kyiv and its Western allies have dismissed this as a false pretext for an unprovoked attack.
Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man for a long time, has seen his business empire shrink since 2014, when Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and two eastern Ukrainian regions – Donetsk and Luhansk – declared independence from Kyiv.
According to Forbes magazine, Akhmetov’s net worth in 2013 reached $ 15.4 billion. It currently stands at $ 3.9 billion.
“For us, the war broke out in 2014. We lost all our assets both in Crimea and in the temporarily occupied territory of Donbass. “We lost our business, but it made us stronger and stronger,” he said.
“I am confident that, as the largest private business in the country, SCM will play a key role in Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction,” he said, quoting officials as saying that the damage from the war had reached $ 1 trillion.
“We will definitely need an unprecedented program of international reconstruction, the Marshall Plan for Ukraine,” he said of the US aid project, which helped rebuild Western Europe after World War II.
“I believe that we will all restore a free, European, democratic and successful Ukraine after our victory in this war.
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