European sanctions against Russian metallurgy do not work – Metinvest CEO

European sanctions introduced against Russian metallurgy do not work. Moreover, these sanctions put European companies that deliberately refused to cooperate with Russia in discriminatory conditions.

After all, they cannot compete with those companies that continue to buy cheap Russian raw materials.

About this in an interview with the British The Telegraph said General Director of Metinvest Group Yuriy Ryzhenkov, commenting on the sanctions introduced by the European Union against metallurgical products from Russia.

“The introduction of some sanctions has been delayed, and they will start working only in a few months, or even years. And there are sanctions that, in my opinion, do not work properly – for example, on the import of steel semi-finished products to the EU. After all, Russia was given a quota for the supply of these semi-finished products for the next two years, and this quota is approximately equal to the average volume of deliveries of Russian semi-finished products to the EU over the past five years. So, in principle, this is not even a limitation,” he emphasized.

At the same time, he drew attention to the fact that with such a decision, the EU punished those European companies that deliberately refused Russian products – because now these companies will lose the competitive battle to those who cheaply buy Russian semi-finished products.

“There are many European companies that continue to buy Russian products. The main importing countries are Belgium and Italy. We are talking about millions of tons per year,” Ryzhenkov emphasized.

He expressed confidence that such “softness” in the issue of sanctions is caused by a serious Russian lobby in Europe. After all, the arguments used in these countries to protect cooperation with the Russian Federation do not withstand any criticism – especially when they say that the rejection of Russian products will cause the shutdown of European enterprises and the dismissal of personnel.

“Metinvest company buys raw materials for work on the open European market. That said, we didn’t lay off our people from the UK plant, and we didn’t lay off our people from the Italian plant. And we are not going to stop our objects. Therefore, in my opinion, there is lobbying that prevents these countries from banning Russian imports,” Ryzhenkov emphasized.

Earlier, the Minister of Economy of Ukraine Yulia Svyridenko stated that all Russian metallurgical products without exception should be subject to sanctions, and Ukrainian metallurgists should be given access to the American and European markets.