Ukrainian steelmaking is on the brink of collapse, according to the head of the country’s largest steel producer, who says the industry is being caught in a pincer movement between an intensifying Russian bombing campaign and new European Union import restrictions.

Yuriy Ryzhenkov, chief executive of Metinvest, a Fortune 500 Europe company, has led the steelmaker and its 33,700 employees through more than four years of full-scale war. More than 8,000 of its employees are fighting Russian forces, its factories are under near-constant bombardment, and hundreds of its workers have been killed. Ryzhenkov said the current phase of the war is as tough as anything the company has faced since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As the country’s largest steel producer, Metinvest’s fortunes are closely tied to the fate of Ukrainian steelmaking as a whole.

“The blockade of the seaports is more severe now than it was in 2022,” said Ryzhenkov, who has served as chief executive since 2013. “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.”

He said August and September of this year brought one of the most severe bombing campaigns the company has endured, forcing it to halt both of its steel mills.

“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,” he said. “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.”

EU quotas add pressure from the west

A new threat has emerged not from the east but from Brussels. 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%, a reduction expected to lower steel imports from Ukraine to the EU by 1.3 million metric tons per year, according to the GMK Center, a Ukrainian think tank.

Ryzhenkov argued the cut arrives at the worst possible moment, with Ukraine’s seaports blocked and no alternative export routes available.

“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,” he said.

When the full-scale invasion began, the EU abolished all restrictions on Ukrainian steel, recognizing that the port blockade had left the bloc as the country’s only accessible market — a step Ryzhenkov described as “the correct answer.”

“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,” he said. “It was too harsh, given the circumstances.”

Negotiations are continuing, and the EU has said it is aware that Ukraine is a unique case. Still, the combined pressure of armed invasion from the east and tariffs from the west has left steelmaking in Ukraine in a perilous position. With the steeper cut locked in for the quota period beginning in July 2026, the open question is whether those negotiations produce terms that account for the port blockade and the wartime logistics constraints Ryzhenkov describes.

Production down nearly two-thirds since 2021

The numbers underline the decline. Between 2021 and 2025, steel production in Ukraine fell from 21 million metric tons to 7.4 million metric tons. The value of exports fell from $22 billion to $6 billion over the same period, and tax revenues dropped from $3.5 billion to $870 million. Russia’s constant attacks on factories, energy supply systems, and railways mean that steel supply to the Ukrainian armed forces is also being degraded.

Ryzhenkov said the industry cannot survive without secure markets.

“There is pretty much no future without a market to which you can sell,” he said. “With the continuing disruptions, it’s very difficult to make a steel business economically viable. [This] is typically a business where you have to have 90% plus capacity utilization to be profitable, even in normal times, and where you have to develop your markets with long-term commitments, and in today’s circumstances, that’s just not possible.”

Asked whether the world could be witnessing the end of steelmaking in Ukraine, his answer was blunt.

“Well, if nothing is done, it’s almost inevitable,” he said. “If 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.”

A family legacy in steel

Ryzhenkov comes from a long line of steelmakers: his grandmother was a coal plant chemical engineer closely aligned with steelmaking, and his mother, father, and uncle have all worked in the sector. That family history carries a deep determination to keep going despite the losses and the constant threat of further attacks.

“To be honest, that’s the only choice we have, right?” he said. “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.”

This story was originally reported by Fortune.