COLUMN: Moscow hits the Kryvyi Rih steelworks four times, and no one signs the payroll

The iron-ore city

Before, on payday

Kryvyi Rih, before.

A city of iron. Mines, slag heaps, furnaces. And in the middle, the largest steelworks in Ukraine, the old Kryvorizhstal, which does the whole run: ore comes out of the mine and leaves as rolled steel.

In a city like that, the year does not begin in January. It begins again every payday.

On payday, the rent goes out. On payday, the fridge fills up. On payday, you pay back the neighbor who covered the gas. On payday, you promise the kids what you promised them the month before. On payday, the city breathes.

A paycheck, in a city like that, does not feed only one family. It keeps the grocery store going, the garage, the neighborhood soccer club.

This is not nostalgia. It is arithmetic.

From ore to rebar

In 2025, the plant turned out 1.7 Mt of steel and 7.6 Mt of iron ore, according to Reuters.

Rebar. Wire rod. What holds up the slabs, the bridges, the walls people rebuild after every strike.

The roar of the rolling mill. The heat of the furnace on bare forearms. The siren at shift change. A steel city is recognized by ear before it is recognized on a map.

And by its calendar. The shift, the week, the pay. Everything else is arranged around it.

A steel city counts in paydays.

8:30 a.m., Luxembourg time

A statement from Luxembourg

On September 25, at 8:30 a.m. Luxembourg time, ArcelorMittal publishes a page.

The group writes that it has informed the Ukrainian government that its Kryvyi Rih subsidiary can no longer restart “in a safe and sustainable manner.”

Four missile strikes in five weeks. The last on September 21. Production facilities heavily damaged.

The toll fits on one line: five dead and 17 employees injured, one of them still in critical condition.

Five dead, one billion

The next line is about money. A non-cash impairment of about US$1 billion, mostly on land, buildings and equipment.

Since 2022, the group says it has put in more than US$700 million to keep the plant running.

For scale, one benchmark. In 2025, the group booked US$61.4 billion in revenue and poured 55.6 Mt of crude steel worldwide, according to its September 14 filing. Kryvyi Rih accounts for barely more than 3% of that. It accounts for everything in its own city.

The subsidiary’s chief executive, Mauro Longobardo, says he concluded with deep regret that the plant can no longer be operated safely. He calls its workers “the embodiment of bravery.”

The rest is a promise. Discuss the plant’s future with the government. Preserve the infrastructure. Keep an option to restart for the day peace returns.

The statement counts the dead, not the paychecks.

A billion for the walls, one line for the people.

Six silences

What the page leaves out

Read the statement again. It leaves things out.

It does not say how many employees remain on the payroll. It does not say who will pay their wages during the shutdown. It does not say whether this is a temporary layoff or the end of their contracts. It does not say how many more months the group will fund. It does not say what it will cost to guard a cold plant. Nor does it say what the government answered.

Six silences, on a page written for the markets.

The page counts in dollars. The city counts in hryvnias, and in months.

I stand with the steelworkers of Kryvyi Rih, and with the state that will have to keep them on their feet. Against the Russian command that chose the same plant four times in five weeks. Because the September 25 statement values the walls at a billion and says not one word about wages.

Seventeen thousand, or fifteen thousand

Even the headcount has no number on the page.

Interfax-Ukraine writes that the plant employs about 17,000 people. The Financial Times, as carried by Ukrainska Pravda on September 21, counted more than 15,000 workers for the three big steelworks shut down together.

The two numbers do not match. Neither appears in the statement.

Thousands of pay stubs. No total.

We know what the walls cost. Not how many people.

Four times the same target

From mid-August to September 21

Let’s take it in order.

Mid-August, a first strike. Two dead, the group wrote on September 14.

On Saturday, September 12, a ballistic missile hits the area of blast furnace complex No. 1. Two contractors die. Two employees are injured. Primary steel production stops.

On the 14th, the group writes that it is too early to estimate how long repairs will take.

Then a third strike. Then, on September 21, the fourth.

Three strikes in nine days. The last two landed while repairs were under way.

On the 25th, there are no more repairs to estimate.

“They knew exactly where to hit”

Kryvyi Rih is not alone. The Financial Times, as carried by Ukrainska Pravda, writes that the ballistic strikes of early September knocked out the country’s three largest steelworks. Two belong to Metinvest, one to ArcelorMittal. Together, 90% of Ukrainian steel.

The blast furnaces were the targets, according to the same source. “They knew exactly where to hit,” said Oleksandr Vodoviz, head of the chief executive’s office at Metinvest.

Three plants. Two owners. One method.

Everything points to a target list, not a run of bad luck. That list has an author, and he sits in the Kremlin.

One missile can miss. Four make a choice.

The convenient alibi

Four years of losses

The counterargument deserves its hardest form.

ArcelorMittal was looking for the exit. The missiles opened it.

The file feeds it. In February, according to Interfax-Ukraine, the subsidiary closed its foundry and machine shop: 1,700 direct jobs, more than 2,400 with the closure of the blooming mill.

In May, according to GMK Center, one of the two blast furnaces stopped because the railway was not delivering fluxes. Mauro Longobardo then spoke of a fatal risk for a company that had been losing money for four years.

In the first half of 2026, the subsidiary’s net loss reached 6.64 billion hryvnias, up 57.4%, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

At the end of June, the cumulative uncovered loss stood at 39.5 billion hryvnias, again according to the agency.

A plant that loses money. A parent company that writes it down. Four missiles that fall. The story tells itself.

What the alibi cannot explain

And yet an alibi does not pick its targets from two different owners.

Metinvest is not a Luxembourg subsidiary. Its two steelworks took the same missiles, the same month, on the same blast furnaces.

Would a group in a hurry to leave have put more than US$700 million into four years of keeping the furnaces lit, as it says it did?

Five dead are not an accounting entry.

A money-losing plant can close by decision. This one stops by missile. The first gets negotiated. The second gets endured.

A loss on the books never fired a ballistic missile.

Brussels has its share

January 1, 2026

Now the fact that makes my own camp uncomfortable. I say it because the reader on the other side will say it anyway, and will be right on this point.

On January 1, 2026, the European Union put its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the CBAM, into effect. With no exemption for Ukrainian producers, Interfax-Ukraine reported in February.

In March, the subsidiary’s director put the extra cost at $60 to $90 a tonne for European customers. Orders were canceled.

Electricity followed. From $120 per megawatt-hour in the second quarter of 2024 to $230 in February 2026, and up to $370 at peak hours, according to the same agency.

Three hundred thousand tonnes

In the first quarter, according to GMK Center, the plant lost 300,000 tonnes of steel exports because of the European mechanism.

In May, it was Ukraine’s own railway, Ukrzaliznytsia, that stopped delivering the fluxes.

That is the uncomfortable truth. Before the missiles, our rules and Kyiv’s railway had already weakened the plant. Not Moscow alone.

That is true. And it does not change this: a weakened plant can recover, a plant targeted four times in five weeks gets mothballed.

Our rules weakened it. Their missiles stopped it.

Less than a third

A giant’s capacity

What is stopping has to be measured.

The subsidiary claims a capacity of more than six million tonnes of steel a year, Interfax-Ukraine reported in February. In 2025, it produced 1.7 million, according to Reuters.

Less than a third.

In the first half of 2026, 381,190 tonnes of rolled steel and 311,230 tonnes of pig iron, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

And 633,050 tonnes of iron ore concentrate over the same period.

A plant already cut down, then. And yet still the largest in the country.

The weight of a city

What stops in Kryvyi Rih does not stop only in the accounts in Luxembourg.

Steel makes up 15% of Ukraine’s exports, according to Reuters.

The shutdown of the three steelworks will weigh on Ukraine’s tax revenue, Oleksandr Vodoviz warns in the Financial Times.

A plant that pays taxes becomes a plant that costs them.

Even cut by two-thirds, it carried a city.

Five

Two contractors, on a Saturday

Five.

That is not a production figure. It is the number of people who went to work at the steelworks in five weeks and did not come home.

Two in mid-August, the group writes. Two contractors on Saturday, September 12, at the blast furnace complex. The September 25 statement gives the total: five.

On September 12, a body was pulled from the rubble, Ukrinform reports. Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s defense council, spoke of a rescue operation still under way.

The group does not publish their names. I won’t write any either. I have no right to invent one.

One injured, still critical

Seventeen employees injured. Only one whose condition is known: critical, still, as of September 25.

Somewhere in Kryvyi Rih, a family counts days in the hospital instead of paydays.

In other homes, there is the locker being emptied. The work overalls no one washes anymore. The phone that no longer rings at the end of the shift.

On September 14, the group wrote that its thoughts were with the grieving families.

On the 25th, it writes that it is preserving the infrastructure.

You can preserve a blast furnace. You cannot preserve a life.

Five left for their shift. None came home.

A plant in mothballs

Preserve, not restart

The group’s word is preserve.

Preserve the infrastructure so that, “when peace finally returns,” options for restarting remain open. That is the chief executive’s sentence.

A mothballed plant is first of all a silence. No more roar from the rolling mill. No more heat from the furnace. Guards, rounds, roofs tarped before winter.

It is also a cost. The statement gives no figure for it.

The loss in value is already on the books. One billion. Guarding the plant has no line.

What does a plant that produces nothing cost?

Peace as a date

When peace finally returns. No calendar carries that date.

The full-scale war has entered its fifth year. The Kremlin has signed no peace. It has signed four strikes on this plant.

A date without a calendar is a wait. And in a steel city, a wait is counted in months of pay.

A furnace can be preserved. A wage cannot.

The program called Tochka Opory

Two minimum wages

What can still be saved already exists, on paper.

In April, Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers launched a program whose name says it all: Tochka Opory, the fulcrum.

The goal, according to Economy Minister Oleksii Sobolev: that a company that has been hit can keep its team together.

The aid covers part of the wages of a company in forced downtime. At most two minimum wages, or 17,300 hryvnias, for 3 months, extendable to 6 months, according to the State Employment Service.

The money comes from the unemployment insurance fund, with no new budget spending, the Cabinet specified.

Idled workers can also, if they agree, do paid public works. Applications go through the Diia portal.

That is payday in Kryvyi Rih, wartime edition. Two minimum wages. Three months. Maybe six.

The conditions on the form

You must have been operating for at least six months. You must have paid your wages and taxes with no arrears. You must have suffered war damage after January 1, 2026. You must have formally placed your employees on downtime. You must have planned a resumption of activity.

The last condition is the shortest. It is the one that weighs.

The fulcrum exists. It demands a restart plan.

A restart after the peace

A plan with no date

ArcelorMittal is keeping a restart possible for the day peace returns.

Is that a planned resumption, in the sense the form means?

The program text does not say. Neither does the statement.

The Cabinet did write its intention into the very title of its announcement: keep teams together and speed up the recovery of businesses. Speed up. The word assumes a date.

Six months against a war

Three months. Six, at most.

The full-scale war has been going on since February 24, 2022.

After six months, if peace has not returned, and peace does not return by decree…

Seventeen thousand employees, according to Interfax-Ukraine. At most 17,300 hryvnias per person, according to the Employment Service. The two numbers look alike. They do not talk to each other.

And yet this is where the strike turns into a bill. Every month of downtime the group would no longer pay, a Ukrainian fund would pay. Or no one would.

The strike lasts a second. The bill lasts months.

Payday as a target

What a strike is for

Why the same plant four times?

A steelworks does not shoot. It makes rebar and wire rod.

Everything points to another purpose: making Ukraine pay. Its tax revenue, its exports, its unemployment fund.

A shut plant pays no more taxes. Its workers still have to eat. The difference lands on Kyiv’s budget, or on the dinner table.

The strike does not stop at the crater. It carries on in the public accounts, every month the plant stays silent.

Keeping the team

What can still be saved is not the blast furnace. It is the team.

Smelters, rolling-mill operators, electricians who know how to run a full-cycle steelworks. A city that loses them during the shutdown does not get them back on demand.

I admit to one specific fear. That six months from now, the plant will be well preserved and the team scattered.

A cold furnace can be relit. Know-how that has gone elsewhere rarely comes back.

Moscow aims at the steel. The steelworkers have to be saved.

What we are watching

Two hundred civilians in September

Kryvyi Rih is not an exception.

The UN has recorded at least 200 civilians dead in September from strikes hitting homes, hospitals and workplaces, Reuters reports.

Zaporizhstal, part of Metinvest, closed temporarily in August after a deadly strike, the agency also reports.

This is not a bankruptcy. It is not offshoring. It is not a trade-off made in Luxembourg. It is an industry being switched off from the sky.

Our buyers, our rules

And yet we look elsewhere.

Our carbon rules cost this plant orders before the missiles came. Our capitals talk about reconstruction. Reconstruction is done with rebar.

The rebar from Kryvyi Rih no longer comes out.

Luxembourg, Kyiv, Brussels: each has a line in this story. The Kremlin wrote four, by missile.

In other words, every promise to rebuild Ukraine now runs through a question of pay in Kryvyi Rih.

You cannot rebuild a country while its steel goes dark.

Who signs the payroll

Three signatures, one missing

The strikes have a signatory. He sits in the Kremlin, and he chose the same target four times, from mid-August to September 21.

The impairment has a signatory. It sits in Luxembourg, and it valued the walls at a billion.

The support program has a signatory. It sits in Kyiv, and it demands a restart plan.

The payroll has none.

There is one date that does not move, though. The next payday.

The next payday

So who will pay the steelworkers of Kryvyi Rih while Moscow alone decides the date of peace: the group that is shutting down, the state that is resisting, or we who say we support Ukraine?

The statement counted the dead. Someone will have to count the paychecks.

The next payday will arrive on its date. The plant will not.

Moscow signed the strikes. No one has signed the payroll.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• ArcelorMittal — Kryvyi Rih shutdown and an impairment of about US$1 billion, September 25, 2026
• ArcelorMittal, Form 6-K — September 12 strike on the blast furnace complex, September 14, 2026
• State Employment Service of Ukraine — Tochka Opory program conditions, April 3, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Reuters via TimesLive — 2025 output and steel’s share of exports, September 25, 2026
• Interfax-Ukraine — the subsidiary’s workforce, losses and output, September 25, 2026
• Ukrainska Pravda, citing the Financial Times — three steelworks and 90% of steel output halted, September 21, 2026