ArcelorMittal says Kryvyi Rih cannot restart as Ukraine presses the EU for CBAM relief

ArcelorMittal announced on September 25, 2026 that it is unable to safely and sustainably restart operations at ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine's largest steel plant, after four missile strikes in five weeks killed five workers, injured 17, one of them critically, and caused extensive damage to production facilities. The group is taking a non-cash impairment charge of approximately $1 billion, according to its press release of the same day.

The announcement lands in the middle of Ukraine's push for relief from CBAM, three days after Metinvest renewed its own relief request and one day after Pascal Lamy repeated his call for a conditional Ukraine exemption. This report covers what ArcelorMittal said, where Ukraine's relief request actually stands, and what the Lamy proposal adds. The country-level exposure picture sits in the CBAM Ukraine guide.

What ArcelorMittal announced on September 25

ArcelorMittal concluded that it cannot safely and sustainably restart ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih after four missile strikes over five weeks, the most recent on September 21, 2026. The company's release states that the attacks caused fatalities, injuries and extensive damage to production facilities, and that it has provided over $700 million in support to the subsidiary since February 2022.

CEO Mauro Longobardo said: "It is with deep regret that we have concluded that we are no longer able to safely operate ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih." He added that the company would "focus on preserving the infrastructure, so when peace finally returns, options for restarting production remain available." The company gave no restart timeline and said it is discussing the future of the plant with the Government of Ukraine. The formulation matters: this is not a maintenance stoppage with a resumption date, it is an indefinite suspension framed around the return of peace.

The scale of what goes offline is documented in the plant's production record. Shanghai Metals Market, reporting on the announcement on September 28, puts the site's pre-war capacity at more than 8 million tonnes of pig iron and 7 million tonnes of crude steel per year, with 4.9 million tonnes produced in 2021. Since 2022 the plant has run at 1.0 to 1.65 million tonnes annually, roughly a third of its pre-war output.

Three integrated plants, three halts in one month

The Kryvyi Rih suspension is the third halt at a major Ukrainian integrated steel plant in September 2026, after Kametstal and Zaporizhstal. The three cases are summarized below.

The Zaporizhstal and Kametstal halts were reported alongside Metinvest's warning that Ukraine may flip from steel exporter to importer, covered here on September 22. Kyiv Independent reporting dated September 25 widens the frame: Russia has launched at least 9 ballistic missile attacks on Ukraine's steel industry since August 2026, causing close to $100 million in damage, in a sector that contributed 7 percent of Ukraine's GDP last year. The same reporting calls 2026 the industry's worst year since 2022, when the Azovstal and Illich works were destroyed.

Where Ukraine's CBAM relief request actually stands

Ukraine's CBAM relief request runs through government-level negotiations with the European Commission and repeated appeals invoking the force-majeure clause in Article 30(7) of Regulation (EU) 2023/956, not through a single published filing. GMK Center has reported that Ukraine is negotiating with the EU over a possible exemption for its steel industry from CBAM, amid warnings from Ukrainian companies that the mechanism could paralyze the sector during the war. One caveat belongs on the record: no formal, dated exemption request document has been made public, so the precise form and date of the current ask cannot be independently confirmed. What the public record does establish is a sequence of four verified steps.

• Ukraine and its industry associations repeatedly appealed to the European Commission through 2025 to invoke Article 30(7), which permits temporary relief for countries hit by exceptional and unforeseeable circumstances, per GMK Center reporting.
• The Commission refused Ukraine force-majeure relief in December 2025, before the definitive regime started.
• The Trade Union of Steelmakers and Miners of Ukraine (PMGU) sent letters to Ukraine's government leaders and EU officials calling for urgent CBAM exemption solutions, citing ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih's lost orders.
• Metinvest renewed its request for temporary CBAM relief on September 22, 2026, per SteelOrbis.

The September 25 announcement hardens the argument behind those steps. Oleksandr Vodoviz, head of the CEO's office at Metinvest, put it directly in the Kyiv Independent report of the same day: "Ukrainian producers cannot finance large-scale decarbonization while repeatedly rebuilding after missile attacks." On the EU side, the same report describes MEP Karin Karlsbro as urging Brussels to review its trade policy and remove Ukraine from the tariff regime it introduced in June. The institutional record so far points the other way: the European Parliament's September 15 negotiating mandate contains no Ukraine carve-out in Parliament's CBAM mandate, a gap covered here when it was adopted.

Lamy's latest intervention: an exemption tied to accession

Pascal Lamy proposed on September 24, 2026 that Ukraine's CBAM exemption be conditional on its progress toward EU membership and on commitments to align its climate policy with EU standards, per SteelOrbis. The reported design rests on Ukraine's status as an EU candidate country and on climate-policy alignment commitments made as part of the accession process, which include establishing a domestic emissions trading system. Ukraine's domestic ETS is currently non-operational, so the country has no qualifying carbon price to deduct from its CBAM liability.

In remarks published by ua.news on September 23, Lamy said that "given Ukraine's situation during the war, Ukrainian steel should still be exempt from the CBAM", adding: "My position on steel is based largely on the reality of the war and the need to help Ukraine during this war. We must not do things that create obstacles for the Ukrainian economy."

The former EU trade commissioner has pressed this question repeatedly since July, when a Contexte interview carried his first call for a Ukraine CBAM exemption tied to decarbonisation milestones, followed by an S&P Global interview in August. The design is consistent across his interventions: relief in exchange for verifiable decarbonization and accession progress, rather than a blanket carve-out that would invite copycat claims from other exporting countries. What has changed between July and September is the factual backdrop, from commercial pressure on operating plants to an industry in which the three largest integrated sites stand idle.

What changes for EU importers

For EU importers, the Kryvyi Rih suspension converts a cost problem into a supply problem: the certificate obligation on Ukrainian steel is unchanged, but the steel itself is disappearing. Three practical points follow.

• Certificate obligations on 2026 imports of Ukrainian steel already made remain due regardless of the plant halts. Costs can be modeled in the CBAM cost calculator at the current certificate price.
• Importers with Ukrainian mills in their supply chain should confirm production status and emissions data availability directly. The supplier data request generator produces a structured request for this situation.
• Any replacement sourcing carries its own CBAM profile. Substituting Turkish or Asian blast furnace steel for Ukrainian material changes the embedded emissions entering the declaration, not just the price.

Whether the relief question moves now depends on the trilogues on the CBAM scope extension, the last open venue where a Ukraine provision could enter legal text. The Commission has refused force majeure once, the Parliament declined a carve-out twice, and the case being argued in Brussels has been rewritten by four missile strikes in five weeks. This site will report whether the negotiators respond.