By KYIV. Nov 23 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Azovstal steel plant (Mariupol, Donetsk region), which is part of the Metinvest group, after the de-occupation and Ukraine’s victory over Russia, should be restored as a symbol of resilience.
"It’s very unfortunate that Azovstal became famous not for the skyscrapers in London and not for the cruiser ships in the Mediterranean that were built from Azovstal steel. The plant became world famous because it was destroyed. I think the feeling we all and citizens of Mariupol have is that we need to restore it. Azovstal is the symbol, which we need to rebuild," Metinvest CEO Yuriy Ryzhenkov said in an interview with British BBC Radio 4, in which he spoke about the situation in Ukraine’s energy sector, the resumption of production, the conditions for ending the war, resilience of Ukrainians and a new Marshall Plan for the country.
Asked about the new tactics of the Russians, based on the destruction of the Ukrainian energy sector, the top manager said: "If you don’t have electricity, you don’t have the sewage system, you don’t have the water, you don’t have the heating. And that all creates or can create a big humanitarian problem. But at the moment, the Ukrainian energy workers have been managing to keep the system running, even with all those casualties."
At the same time, he said that Ukraine is ready for the passage of winter in difficult conditions.
"Ukraine is a partially rural country, so you have quite a lot of places where most of us have relatives in the buildings where they can heat them by just using coal or wood. We lived through the 1990s when there were times when we had neither electricity nor water, so this is not something that will force the Ukrainian people to actually go and say to our president: let’s stop defending the country," Ryzhenkov said.
The CEO, referring to the opinion of many military experts, stated: the war will most likely end next year. Ukraine will not agree to the annexation of its territories. "Neither the Ukrainian government nor the Ukrainian people are ready to do that. So I think the war will be over with the liberation of all Ukrainian territories, including Crimea… We believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine," the head of the company said.
According to him, Metinvest uses its production to help the war effort: it produces armoured steel plates for the bulletproof vests, some defence structures, which they’re using in the field. In Zaporizhia, for example, the company’s trucks and excavators are being used to build the defence line of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Concerning the issue of the de-occupation of Mariupol, the CEO said that after that the company would begin to restore enterprises, the entire industry.
"Of course, we will not rebuild the old industry in its pre-war format. We will build there a new industry – more modern and environmentally friendly. As for financing this reconstruction, this is where we would expect some help, for example, from the government, from the reparations that we will get from Russia… We need something like the Marshall Plan, which was developed to rebuild Europe after World War II," the top manager said.
Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of mining and metallurgical enterprises. The group’s enterprises are located mainly in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
The main shareholders of the holding are the SCM group (71.24%) and Vadim Novinsky’s Smart Holding (23.76%), which jointly manage it.
Metinvest Holding LLC is the management company of the Metinvest group.
