Metinvest Bets on a Wartime Exception: Ukraine's Case Against Being Counted Among the EU's Steel Surplus

Metinvest has asked the European Union to exempt Ukrainian steel from its import restrictions, warning that losing access to its principal export market threatens the sector's survival. The request, made by CEO Yuriy Ryzhenkov through a BBC interview relayed by SteelOrbis on 19 October 2026, turns on a familiar trade-policy tension: a safeguard designed to shield EU mills from global oversupply is being applied to a supplier that is not the source of that oversupply.

The specific numbers reported are that the EU has capped annual duty-free steel imports at 18.3 million tonnes, a reduction of 47 percent from 2024 levels, and that Ukrainian industry estimates put the eventual decline in its EU-bound exports at 50–60 percent. These figures come from a single relayed source and should be treated as reported rather than independently confirmed; MetalMate was unable to retrieve the underlying regulation or the original BBC article.

The substance of the complaint

Ryzhenkov's argument is one of category error. Ukraine, he says, has been grouped with exporters of low-priced steel such as China and Turkey without adequate weight being given to wartime circumstances. The legal point is that Ukraine's Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area with the EU does not immunise it from separate trade-defence measures: a safeguard or quota regime applies to FTA partners unless a carve-out is expressly written into the instrument.

That is what Metinvest is asking for — at minimum a country-specific exception for Ukrainian product. The company also argues that logistical constraints severely limit its ability to redirect volumes elsewhere, which is the decisive commercial fact. For Ukrainian mills, the EU is not one market among many; it is the only large, proximate, hard-currency destination reachable by rail, road and Black Sea routes under wartime conditions.

The production picture behind the request is grim. Ryzhenkov reports that Russian strikes on Ukrainian steelworks have intensified significantly and that national steel production briefly halted entirely in September — characterised as the first complete interruption in roughly 150 years. He warns that the coming winter could be among the hardest in Ukraine's history. Before the full-scale invasion, mining and metallurgy accounted for roughly 10 percent of national income and one-third of exports.

Why the tonnage is secondary to the precedent

On the arithmetic implied by the reported figures, the 2024 duty-free baseline would have been approximately 34.5 million tonnes (18.3 ÷ (1 − 0.47)). Ukraine's share of EU steel imports is a small fraction of that total. A carve-out for Ukraine would therefore cost EU producers very little in volume terms, which is precisely why the politics matter more than the economics: conceding an exception concedes the principle that war-affected suppliers sit outside the safeguard's logic.

For EU mills, the risk is not Ukrainian tonnage but the template. If Ukraine receives a wartime exemption, other suppliers with preferential access or strategic relationships will argue for equivalent treatment. That is likely to make the Commission cautious about the wording rather than the volume — narrowing any relief to a defined period, a defined product set or a defined reconstruction purpose.

The Turkish complication

The inclusion of Turkey in the group of low-priced suppliers cited by Ryzhenkov is worth noting for a reason beyond rhetoric. Turkey is a substantial buyer and re-roller of Ukrainian semi-finished steel — slab and billet — so a quota regime that constrains Ukrainian exports interacts with Turkish re-rolling economics as well as with EU import competition. A squeeze on Ukrainian semi-finished shipments does not simply protect EU flat-rolled producers; it can tighten feedstock availability for Turkish converters who compete with those same EU producers in export markets. The source material gives no figures on these flows, so this remains an analytical observation rather than a quantified effect.

What would settle the question

Three things would materially change the picture, and none is available in the reporting so far. First, the actual legal instrument: whether the 18.3 Mt figure refers to a global tariff-rate quota, how it is allocated, and whether any Ukraine-specific country quota or wartime clause already exists. Second, the tonnages involved: Metinvest's and Ukraine's actual EU shipments in 2024–2026, without which the 50–60 percent projection cannot be sized. Third, the positions of the other parties — the European Commission, eastern EU producers who would resist a carve-out, and the Ukrainian government, whose advocacy would carry more weight than a single company's.

There is also a supply-side caveat that cuts against the framing of the request. If Ukrainian production can be halted entirely by strikes, as reported for September, then quota relief alone will not restore export volumes. What Metinvest is really seeking is demand-side certainty — the assurance that when mills can produce, they have somewhere to sell. That is a reasonable ask for a war economy, but it is a different ask from the one the headline implies, and Brussels will recognise the difference.