Rinat Akhmetov’s steel plants and electricity substations have been damaged by Russian attacks–and hundreds of his employees have been killed. But he’s determined to stay in Ukraine and support his country.
Rinat Akhmetov’s steel plants and electricity substations have been damaged by the attacks–and hundreds of his employees have been killed. But he’s determined to stay in Ukraine and support his country.
Nearly a year ago, Ukraine’s richest person, Rinat Akhmetov, pledged to do everything he could to help his country fight back against the war launched by Russia on February 24, 2022, promising to spare no expense. Since then, attacks by Russian soldiers have not only led to an estimated 100,000 dead or injured in Ukraine, but also have laid waste to some of Akhmetov’s holdings in the country. Russian forces destroyed key plants owned by his mining and steel firm Metinvest and ravaged substations of his power generation firm DTEK. Worse still, 517 of his employees are among the dead and another 1,000 are injured.
Yet Akhmetov, the son of a coal miner who grew up in Donetsk, remains committed to repair the damage, win the war and force Russia to make reparations. Metinvest, he tells Forbes by email, is still operating, but in a diminished capacity. He says he’s continuing to pay his 150,000 employees and that his group, SCM, paid $2 billion in taxes in 2022. (He’s also got a superyacht on order that’s being built at a reported price tag of $500 million.) In addition, through his foundation, his companies and the Donetsk-based professional soccer team he owns, Akhmetov says he’s given $150 million in goods and services, including infrastructure repair and energy supplies. His companies have also produced nearly 200,000 bullet-proof vests and armored shelters for the Ukrainian army.
The 56-year-old billionaire, whose fortune dropped from an estimated $14 billion before the war to a current $4.3 billion, responded to questions from Forbes earlier this week from an undisclosed location in Ukraine. His answers, provided to Forbes Ukraine, a licensed edition of Forbes, are below.
How is the war going? Do you see an end to it and what would “victory” for Ukraine be at this point?
RINAT AKHMETOV: The war is going the way Putin has never expected. He did not expect that Ukraine could withstand. But Ukraine has held out, liberated half of the territory occupied by his criminal troops and is heading towards victory. He did not expect that the Western world would stand united: yet the West is united as never before in supporting Ukraine. It has been providing economic and military assistance and imposing unprecedented sanctions. He did not expect that Ukraine could survive the winter without electricity and heating.
Our people have not only restored the energy grid and survived, but also showed Putin that we will never stop fighting for our freedom. He thought that Ukrainians would shower him with flowers, but we have met Russian soldiers with guns defending every inch of our homeland.
A victory for me means to restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine within the borders of 1991, which includes Donbas and the Crimea. It means that we punish the aggressor state for its crimes against humanity, get reparations from Russia, and implement a new Marshall Plan for Ukraine as a member of EU and NATO.
How are you operating your businesses during this time?
The way business operates has not changed, the circumstances have changed significantly. The management and supervisory boards of our businesses work 24/7, addressing the most challenging problems of wartime: from repair work and energy supplies to production of hundreds of thousands of bulletproof vests and armored shelters for the Ukrainian army.
