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‘If nothing is done, it’s almost inevitable’: Ukraine’s Yuriy Ryzhenkov on why steelmaking is on the brink of collapse as Russian bombing intensifies 

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Kamal Ahmed

Executive Editorial Director of Europe and the Middle East

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October 12, 2026, 1:00 AM ET

Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest, the largest steelmaker in Ukraine.Courtesy of Metinvest

Yuriy Ryzhenkov is that rare individual—a chief executive who has led his firm of 33,700 people during a never-ending war. He is the CEO of the largest steelmaker in Ukraine, Metinvest. More than 8,000 of his employees are fighting Russian forces. Factories are under constant bombardment. Hundreds of Metinvest colleagues have been killed. 

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Amid the flames and destruction, Ryzhenkov says that this period of the war is as tough as anything the company has seen since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago. 

“The blockade of the seaports is more severe now than it was in 2022,” Ryzhenkov, who became CEO in 2013, tells me. “We’ve been hit numerous times. Our facilities have been hit over the last four and a half years, and even though we were restoring them after every hit, you lose. You get weaker with every such attack. 

“In wartime you cannot afford to restore to the original state. You do the best you can to continue operating, and that best is never the ideal. Unfortunately, it was one of the most severe campaigns for bombing in August and September this year. We had to stop both of our steel mills. 

“We lost 14 people at our steel mills, which was probably the largest loss since 2023 in a single bombing. That’s where we are.” 

Now there is another threat to the future of steelmaking in Ukraine, and it doesn’t come from the East, but from the European Union. In July, new tariffs were applied to all EU steel imports in an effort to protect the continent’s industry from cheaper foreign competition. The key steel tariff-rate quota for Ukraine from July 2026 was cut by 60%, and is expected to reduce steel imports from Ukraine to the EU by 1.3 million metric tons per year, according to the GMK Center, a Ukrainian think tank. 

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“If you compare the quotas that were allocated to Ukraine this year to what was supplied last year, it’s minus 60%, and that’s at the time when the ports were already closed, and we literally have no other alternative,” Ryzhenkov says. 

“When the invasion happened, the EU pretty much realized that for Ukraine the only available market is actually the EU with the blockade of ports. They abolished any restrictions for the steel to be supplied there, which was, in my view, the correct answer. 

“In wartime you cannot afford to restore to the original state. You do the best you can to continue operating, and that best is never the ideal.”Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Fortune 500 europe company, Metinvest

“And then suddenly, in the first half of this year, we got these quotas where we were pretty much dumped with all the other countries [outside the EU], and the fact that we had exceptional circumstances in terms of logistics, in terms of energy supply, in terms of personnel availability, they were not taken into account, in my view, at all. 

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“It was too harsh, given the circumstances.” 

Negotiations continue, and the EU has said it is aware that Ukraine is a unique case. But the pincer movement—the armed invasion from the East, and tariffs from the West—is leaving steelmaking in Ukraine in a perilous position. Between 2021 and 2025, steel production in Ukraine fell from 21 million to 7.4 million metric tons; the value of exports fell from $22 billion to $6 billion; and tax revenues dropped from $3.5 billion to $870 million. Russia’s constant attacks on factories, energy supply systems, and the railways means that steel supply to the Ukrainian armed forces is also being degraded. 

I ask whether we could be witnessing the end of steelmaking in Ukraine? 

“Well, if nothing is done, it’s almost inevitable,” he says. “If Ukraine is not allowed to participate in the European market fully, and at the same time the circumstances preclude any significant investments, then, I mean, everything comes to an end eventually.” 

Ryzhenkov comes from a long line of steelmakers. His grandmother was a coal plant chemical engineer closely aligned to steelmaking, and his mother, father, and uncle all work in the sector. That family history does bring with it a high level of determination to continue despite the losses and the constant threats of more attacks. 

“To be honest, that’s the only choice we have, right?” he tells me. “Well, not the only choice. I mean, obviously, you can slam the door and walk out, but we have more than 35,000 people working for us with their families. We have 8,500 of our employees in the Ukrainian armed forces, which also rely on us. So, I mean, why would you slam the door if you can still try to do something to carry on? I just don’t find a reason for myself to do that.” 

Quick note: As the CFO mandate keeps expanding, Fortune is convening C-Suite Conversations: In Conversation with Finance Leaders on 28 October. CFOs from Loewe, Standard Chartered Bank, and MUFG Americas join Fortune’s Sam Birchall to discuss building the next generation of finance leadership. Register here.

About the Author

By Kamal AhmedExecutive Editorial Director of Europe and the Middle East

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Kamal Ahmed is the executive editorial director of Europe and the Middle East. Kamal is the author of Letter from London, Fortune Europe’s weekly take on global business as seen from London. Previously, he was director of audio at The Telegraph and p

Oct 11, 2026 #MichaelSmerconish#AnnieJacobsen#Russia

Watch Michael’s new show “Can We Agree?”: https://www.youtube.com/show/VLPLArM1…

A 28-year-old researcher dies under mysterious circumstances at a Russian anti-plague laboratory in Siberia. Authorities quarantine potentially exposed individuals but insist there is no dangerous pathogen outbreak. So why are questions mounting about what really happened? Michael Smerconish speaks with investigative journalist and bestselling author Annie Jacobsen, whose recent book, *Biological War: A Scenario*, explores a terrifying hypothetical: a genetically modified form of pneumonic plague escaping from a high-security laboratory in Russia and triggering a global catastrophe. Now, just months after the book’s publication, reports of a death at a Russian research institute have raised unsettling questions about biological safety, transparency, and international oversight. Jacobsen explains the similarities between her extensively researched scenario and the reported incident, while acknowledging that there is no confirmed evidence of a biological weapons accident or plague outbreak. The conversation explores: • What Russian authorities have disclosed about the researcher’s death. • Why the reported quarantines have attracted international attention. • The possibility of dual-use laboratories conducting both legitimate medical research and potentially dangerous biological work. • The limitations of international biological weapons agreements. • Whether the United States has sufficient safeguards against an emerging biological threat. Jacobsen also explains why independent verification matters when governments control the information coming out of sensitive research facilities. Could a dangerous biological incident go undetected until it’s too late? Watch Michael Smerconish’s conversation with Annie Jacobsen and share your thoughts in the comments. Subscribe for more conversations exploring national security, politics, and the stories shaping our world. #MichaelSmerconish#AnnieJacobsen#Russia#BiologicalWeapons#Plague#NationalSecurity

The AI gods

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

Axios CEO Jim VandeHei writes in his weekly C-Suite newsletter: Kevin Roose’s new book, “The AGI Chronicles,” provides a Rosetta Stone to understanding the three most important architects of modern AI: Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis. Why it matters: Knowing what motivates each man helps explain their business strategies, public posturing and conflicts. Here’s my distillation of Roose’s take based on his book, interviews and podcast appearances — especially Derek Thompson’s Plain English, which explores the three men and their motivations. Read the book. … Listen to the pod The survivalist: Dario Amodei (Anthropic) You can trace Dario’s warnings (and obsessive worry) about AI catastrophe to … the atomic bomb. He used to hand every new Anthropic employee his favorite book, “The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “His hero is Leo Szilard. Szilard conceived the nuclear chain reaction and then urged fellow physicists to keep it secret. He drafted the 1939 Einstein letter to FDR that launched the Manhattan Project, then fought to restrain the bomb’s use. Dario has likened himself to Szilard, who decided once the blueprint of nuclear weapons was known, America had no choice but to build or control it — or lose to Nazi Germany. Read him as: a man who believes he’s building the bomb and must get there before the reckless do. It’s unclear if “the reckless” is China or Sam, whom he deeply distrusts The seller: Sam Altman (OpenAI)Sam has two distinct gifts, in Roose’s telling: an ability to sell anyone on anything and an unshakable belief in limitless scaling. Altman can figure out what someone wants and give it to them, or appear to. The rap from countless former colleagues: He tells different people different things, leaving people wondering what sits at his core. This has allowed him to raise insane amounts of money, turn a nonprofit into an IPO-bound behemoth and scale faster than almost anyone. It has also left Dario, Elon Musk and many former colleagues loathing him. Read him as: the biggest, fastest, at almost any cost. Great for speed. But the purpose is the mystery. The scientist: Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind) Demis got the science right — early. His AlphaFold cracked protein folding and won him a share of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. (“The Thinking Game” documentary is a must-watch on this.) But he got LLMs wrong. He thought that modern AI would be developed in a lab governed by scientists and global leaders and shown to the public only when big problems were solved. He was deeply skeptical of the scaling laws Sam and Dario rode to power — and to substantial early leads. Selling DeepMind to Google suffocated him, so Demis is scrambling to recapture his magic and glory. Read him as: a scientist and purist forced to sprint in a race he didn’t want, on a path he doubted, against two men with a big head start. Share this story. If you’re a CEO or on a CEO’s team: Ask to join Jim’s new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.

OPEN SOURCE

The hidden risk in China’s open model boom

Conversations about model safety have swept US frontier labs. It’s a different story in China.

On Thursday, research firm SemiAnalysis published a report analyzing hundreds of model releases from nine leading Chinese labs over the past five years, finding that only a small percentage of them publish safety reports or disclosures alongside their releases. The analysis included four of the country’s biggest hyperscalers, ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, as well as five of its hottest startups, DeepSeek, MoonShot, Zhipu Z.ai, MiniMax, and StepFun.

The firm analyzed 857 model releases between September 2021 and September 2026, including 741 product models and 116 research models. Of that pool, only 31 models, or around 3.6%, had safety reports attached to them, and only 9 of them were available at or before release.

Though Alibaba shipped the most models out of the group at 238, only seven of those were accompanied by safety reports. Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance had only four safety reports for the dozens of models they released. As for the startups, only Zhipu Z.ai has shipped a safety report every year since 2022, but still has published only nine safety reports of the 131 models it’s released. It’s also the only lab in the group with a strategic commitment to safety, according to SemiAnalysis. Deepseek has published six safety reports for its 93 releases, StepFun has three for its 39, and Moonshot and MiniMax have one each for their respective 34 and 20 releases.

It should be noted that the SemiAnalysis report didn’t include analysis of US labs’ safety reports upon release. However, amid a number of recent incidents involving agents breaking through sandboxes, safety conversations among these labs have intensified:  The leaders of two of AI’s biggest power players, Anthropic and OpenAI, have both stated their concerns about safety outpacing development, with both companies in recent months promising to slow development of their most powerful models, though those same labs have released a number of new models in recent weeks.

However, these safety conversations also come at a time when enterprises are increasingly searching for alternatives to expensive proprietary APIs as they clamp down on excess AI spend and search for returns. While neolabs like Jev and Pathway are starting to gain traction as a result, many are turning towards open-source models, the bulk of which come from China, for cost and efficiency.

The prisoner’s dilemma of China versus the US has often been used as a justification against pacing frontier model development, both by major model labs and government officials. However, Chinese labs have also been accused on several occasions of excessive distillation to siphon off the capabilities of the most powerful models from their US counterparts. Though a large-scale slowdown of AI development would require a coordinated geopolitical effort, the labs putting safety at the forefront and slowing down could have a positive impact on the broader ecosystem, with ripple effects that could impact Chinese labs. However, as it stands, because a growing number of enterprises are turning to open-source Chinese models to save money and have more control, the enterprises relying on these models need to be aware that the onus for safety falls on them.

Hannah Hummel 11 hours ago

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The last three presidencies have broken the record for the oldest American to take the presidential oath of office. Is the older generation hoarding power and wealth at the expense of the young?

https://p.dw.com/p/5NuPh

Is the US now more a “gerontocracy” than democracy?

The president and many key power brokers are in their 70s and 80s. Although half of the population is 40 or younger, only a fifth of Washington’s lawmakers are under the age of 40.

Legal scholar and author Samuel Moyn tells DW’s Hannah Hummel that the US is now a government being run by and for the elderly, at the expense of younger citizens.

Moyn argues the unfair system is a danger to democracy itself. And while the November midterm elections are expected to reshape Congress, Moyn said, it’s unlikely to make a dent in this disparity.

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Madelaine Pitt | Emily Sherwin | Janina Semenova10/11/2026October 11, 2026

China has a huge population to feed but not enough farmland to do it on its own. Famines and food crises have toppled past rulers. That’s why Xi Jinping has a plan to grow food at home and secure imports from abroad.

https://p.dw.com/p/5O74z

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Food security is an issue on many global leaders’ plates. The climate phenomenon El Nino could destabilize food security worldwide by increasing the risk of floods, droughts and heat waves. And the conflict raging over the Strait of Hormuz is impacting global supply chains.

Grain exports have also been hit by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the US-Israeli war on Iran is stalling fertilizer shipments. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump’s trade war and tariffs have also hit food prices.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials are trying to get ahead of the game on food security, not least because a history of famines has marked the collective consciousness of the country. Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” caused what is thought to be the worst human-caused famine in history.  

And in the Cultural Revolution, Xi Jinping himself reportedly spent many hungry days in rural China. Xi and the CCP have been pushing to grow staples like rice at home, increase China‘s food reserves and also secure imports from abroad.

Brazil has replaced the US as China’s biggest soybean supplier, as China expands in Latin America. And Xi’s infrastructure megaproject, the Belt and Road Initiative, serves as a “Food Silk Road” to help imports reach China without the risk of getting stuck in choke points.

Janina Semenova German journalist and editor with a special focus on Russia

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Trump’s diesel deal poses Putin problem

Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photo: Suzanne Plunkett/Getty Images Republicans already saddled with Trump’s unpopular policies in the midterms now face another awkward choice: whether to back his diesel deal with a dictator many of them despise, Axios’ Andrew Pantazi reports. The big picture: The deal — which calls for Russia to supply diesel to U.S. and global markets — packs some of the GOP’s biggest liabilities into one decision: the Iran war’s economic fallout, the party’s split over Russia, and a president determined to make the election about himself. Energy analysts also doubt it will do much for diesel prices, which average $6.27 a gallon today, up 71% from a year earlier . Several Republican lawmakers criticized the deal over the weekend. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that it may violate a law requiring the White House to notify Congress before lifting sanctions. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) vowed to force a House vote blocking the oil purchases. Yes, but: Some Republicans, like Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, backed the arrangement. The White House pushed back on criticism of Trump’s record. White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Axios: “President Trump has consistently proven his doubters wrong.” A senior administration official said Trump is “laser-focused on bringing down costs, whether it’s diesel with the Russians or importing Argentine beef. Some people might not like it, but he’s thinking of what Americans are paying and what he can do about it.” Go deeper.