Ukraine’s richest man has pledged to help rebuild the beleaguered city of Mariupol, a place close to his heart where he owns two major steel mills that he says will once again compete globally.
Rinat Akhmetov has seen his business empire destroyed by eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, but he remains defiant, certain that what he calls “our brave soldiers” will defend the city of the Sea of Azov reduced to a desert for seven weeks of war. bombing.
For the time being, however, his company Metinvest, Ukraine’s largest steelmaker, has announced that it cannot deliver its supply contracts and while its financial and industrial SCM Group is meeting its debt obligations, its private energy producer DTEK has “optimized the payment of your debts” in an agreement with the creditors.
“Mariupol is a global tragedy and a global example of heroism. For me, Mariupol was and always will be a Ukrainian city,” Akhmetov said in written responses to questions from Reuters.
“I believe 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 Illich Iron and Steel Works mills in Mariupol. .
On Friday, Metinvest said it would never operate under Russian occupation and that the siege of Mariupol had disabled more than a third of Ukraine’s metallurgy production capacity.
Akhmetov praised President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s “passion and professionalism” during the war, apparently softening relations after the Ukrainian leader said last year that conspirators hoping to overthrow his government had tried to involve the businessman.
Akhmetov called the claim “an absolute lie” at the time.
“And war is certainly not the time to disagree… We are going to rebuild all of Ukraine,” he said, adding that he returned to the country on Feb. 23 and has been there ever since.
A Marshall Plan for Ukraine
Akhmetov did not say where exactly he was, but that he was in Mariupol on February 16, 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 a Ukrainian Mariupol and implement our plans (new production) so that the steel produced by Mariupol can compete in global markets as before.”
Russia invaded on February 24 when President Vladimir Putin announced a “special operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” the country. Kiev and its Western allies reject this as a false pretext for an unprovoked attack.
Akhmetov, long Ukraine’s richest man, has seen his business empire shrink since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from the Black Sea and two regions of eastern Ukraine — Donetsk and Luhansk — proclaimed independence from Kiev.
According to Forbes magazine, Akhmetov’s net worth in 2013 reached $15.4 billion. It currently stands at US$ 3.9 billion (R$ 18.3 billion).
“For us, war broke out in 2014. We lost all our assets 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 country’s largest private company, SCM will play a pivotal role in Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction,” he said, citing officials as saying the war’s damage reached $1 trillion. 7 trillion).
“We will definitely need a program of international reconstruction, a Marshall Plan for Ukraine,” he said, referring to the US aid project that helped rebuild Western Europe after World War II.
“I trust that we will all rebuild a free, European, democratic and successful Ukraine after our victory in this war.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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