Metinvest: Ukraine may flip from steel exporter to importer as EU investments go on ice

Ukraine may become dependent on steel imported from Turkey and South Korea, according to Oleksandr Vodoviz, head of the CEO's office at Metinvest, in remarks reported by SteelOrbis on September 22, 2026. The same remarks confirm two capital decisions that run in the opposite direction of the country's EU integration story: Metinvest did not proceed with a EUR 200 million investment in Poland's Huta Częstochowa, and a potential acquisition in Košice, Slovakia is no longer an immediate priority. Alongside the retreat, Vodoviz renewed the group's call for temporary relief from CBAM and criticized a 600,000 tonne EU steel quota.

The statements sketch a scenario that would have been implausible before the full-scale war: one of Europe's notable steel-exporting nations buying its steel abroad while its own mills stand idle. The full exposure picture for the country's producers sits in the CBAM Ukraine country guide.

Why Ukraine may flip from steel exporter to steel importer

Vodoviz warned that declining domestic production could increase Ukraine's dependence on steel imports from Turkey and South Korea, which he said can offer more competitive prices than EU suppliers, per SteelOrbis. The warning rests on the state of Ukraine's remaining integrated plants. Zaporizhstal has remained idled following repeated missile strikes, and Kametstal suspended production following an attack on September 5, according to the same report. Vodoviz said Metinvest's current priority is to preserve its production capacity and workforce.

The import flip is not a hypothetical starting from zero. GMK Center data covered in the report on Ukraine's H1 2026 steel export collapse showed imports of long products into Ukraine rising 64 percent in the first half of 2026, with Turkish and Chinese suppliers gaining ground in the domestic market while Ukrainian long-product exports fell 41.7 percent. Vodoviz's scenario extends that trend to its endpoint: a domestic market supplied from abroad because the domestic mills cannot run.

Turkey's position in that scenario is doubly interesting for CBAM watchers. Turkish mills are themselves among the most CBAM-exposed suppliers to the EU market, a position covered in the CBAM Turkey country guide, yet into Ukraine they would sell entirely outside the mechanism's reach, since CBAM applies only to imports into the EU customs territory.

Which EU investments Metinvest has put on ice

Metinvest had been prepared to invest EUR 200 million in Poland's Huta Częstochowa but did not proceed with the acquisition, and an acquisition in Košice, Slovakia is no longer an immediate priority, Vodoviz said per SteelOrbis. The group is focused on maintaining its existing operations and production capacity, and may reconsider European investment opportunities depending on how conditions develop. The status of each project is set out in the table below.

The capital retreat has a stated financial backdrop. Vodoviz said Metinvest's losses since the beginning of the war amount to billions of dollars, and argued that large Ukrainian industrial companies currently have limited access to government support programs. A company absorbing wartime losses on that scale, with its plants under fire, is withdrawing from EU-based production capacity at exactly the moment EU policy is making Ukrainian-based production harder to sell into the bloc.

Metinvest's own press office carries the underlying interview, given to the Polish outlet Strefa Biznesu, under a headline stating that Brussels must take into account that Ukraine is at war.

The 600,000 tonne quota complaint and the renewed CBAM relief ask

Vodoviz put Ukraine's EU steel quota at 600,000 tonnes and renewed Metinvest's request for temporary relief from CBAM, per SteelOrbis. On the quota, he argued that the EU should take the impact of the war on Ukrainian production into account when reviewing future quota volumes, particularly because reduced wartime output and exports could affect the basis for subsequent quota decisions. Low volumes today, in other words, risk being locked in as low quotas tomorrow. In the underlying Strefa Biznesu interview, Vodoviz went further, saying the quotas are distributed unfairly while Brussels says it sees Ukraine as part of the EU.

One figure needs flagging. The 600,000 tonne quota Vodoviz cites sits well below the roughly 1.05 million tonnes per year that GMK Center tallies across Ukraine's country-specific tariff-quota categories under the EU's new steel safeguard regime. SteelOrbis attributes the lower figure directly to Vodoviz, and the two numbers most plausibly cover different product scopes. Both are reported here as attributed.

The CBAM relief request follows a consistent logic. Three elements make up the argument as SteelOrbis reports it:

• Ukrainian steelmakers are willing to reduce their emissions.
• They currently lack the financial resources and access to financing required for large-scale decarbonization investments.
• Their production facilities remain exposed to attacks, making any investment case harder still.

Vodoviz added that preserving Ukraine's steel industry matters for the country's public finances and its future economic recovery. The ask lands on a bare institutional record: the European Parliament's September 15 negotiating mandate contains no Ukraine carve-out, beside modelling of a complete export halt by 2030, and formal exemption appeals from Ukrainian industry associations were already on file in August, as covered in the report on Ukraine's steel quota and CBAM exemption appeals.

What the import flip argument changes

The import flip reframes Ukraine's CBAM relief case from a producer-protection argument into a trade-flow argument: without relief, the EU may not be trimming a competitor but converting a supplier into a rival buyer of third-country steel. That framing gives trilogue negotiators, the last venue where a Ukraine provision could enter the CBAM scope-extension package, a different cost-benefit question than the one the Parliament's mandate answered on September 15.

For EU importers, the practical takeaways are narrower and more immediate:

• Ukrainian supply is becoming less reliable as a physical matter, independent of CBAM cost. Two of the country's major plants are reported idle or suspended.
• Any importer with Ukrainian mills in the supply chain should confirm current production status and emissions data availability directly. The supplier data request generator produces a structured request for exactly this situation.
• Certificate obligations on 2026 imports of Ukrainian steel are unaffected by any of this. Costs can be modeled in the CBAM cost calculator at the current certificate price.

Whether the exporter-to-importer scenario materializes depends on variables no regulation controls, starting with the missile strikes that took Zaporizhstal and Kametstal offline. What Metinvest has now put on the record is that the EU's quota and CBAM settings are shaping its decisions in the meantime: not only where it sells, but where it invests, and on both counts the current answer is not the EU.