The Russian occupiers in Mariupol have begun to cut down Metinvest’s Ilyich Steelworks for scrap, claims Ukrainian adviser to the mayor of Mariupol Petro Andryushchenko, Kallanish notes.

"Today, smoke rose above the plant,” he noted. “In fact, on the cleared and demined territory, they started cutting the factory to scrap.”

According to Andryushchenko, despite this, the invaders continue to tell the people of Mariupol they are restoring the plant.

"There was rolled metal at the mill, but now it has become scrap," he adds.

In April, Metinvest said that the restoration and restart of Ilyich’s Steelworks is quite real, but this will happen only when Mariupol is liberated from Russian forces (see Kallanish passim). In particular, in the port city, two metallurgical plants were destroyed - Azovstal and Ilyich.

The Metinvest Group stated that its companies in Mariupol would never operate under Russian occupation.

In June, the company has asked steel buyers not to purchase steel products from Ilyich Steel and Azovstal that it says have been stolen by Russian forces from the port of Mariupol. At the beginning of the war, over 234,000 tonnes of steel products manufactured by Ilyich Steel and Azovstal were stored at the port of Mariupol.

Earlier, Metinvest’s trading arm, Metinvest-SMC, began supplying hot rolled coil for further heat treatment and the manufacture of elements used in production of armour protection for military vehicles (see Kallanish passim).

It also arranged the import into Ukraine of scarce thick plate and HRC from its assets in Italy due to a shortage of plate in Ukraine.

Metinvest decreased crude steel production in the first half of the year by 45% on-year to 2.41 million tonnes. Pig iron output in January-June fell by 49% to 2.25mt.

The stoppage of production at the Mariupol plants – Azovstal and Ilyich Steelworks – was partially offset by production at Kametstal, the enterprise claims.