In Ukraine, they announced a reduction in the production of rolled products by 85%

Ukrainian metallurgical enterprises produced 257,000 tons of rolled products in January, which is almost 85% less than a year earlier, the Ukrrudprom portal reports, citing the press service of the state company Ukrmetallurgprom.

Metallurgists last month reduced the production of rolled products by 84.6% compared to January 2022, Ukrrudprom writes. In particular, iron smelting decreased by 84.6% to 240,000 tons, while steel production in January 2023 amounted to 284,000 tons, which is 84.7% less than the same period last year.

At the same time, compared to December last year, the plant increased production by 2.4 times: steel was produced 2.7 times more, and iron smelting decreased by 2.8%.

At the end of September, referendums were held in the LPR, DPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions of Ukraine, as a result of which these territories became part of Russia. In June 2021, the authorities of the LPR and DPR transferred the largest metallurgical enterprises of the republics under the control of the Southern Mining and Metallurgical Complex (YuGMK), which was headed by Russian businessman Yevgeny Yurchenko. YuGMK now controls the Makeevka and Yenakievsky metallurgical plants, the Komsomolsk Mining Administration, Makeevkoks and the Yasinovka Coke Plant in the DPR, as well as the Alchevsk Iron and Steel Works and the Stakhanov Ferroalloy Plant in the LPR.

RBC referring to Yurchenko in November last year, he wrote that in 2022 the production of plants under the management of YuGMK will amount to more than 2 million tons of metal products, the plan for the next year is 3–3.5 million tons. Since the beginning of the NWO in Ukraine, production at these plants has fallen an average of 30%, and up to 20% of employees were called up for service as part of the mobilization, the businessman explained then.

In August, it became known about the proposal of Kyiv expand effect of the agreement on grains and to include metals in it. This was reported by the Financial Times with reference to the country’s Minister of Economy Taras Kachka. Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov did not voice the position of the Kremlin at the time, but recalled the sanctions against Russian metallurgists.