The van picks up the journalist in a parking lot in a city in central Ukraine. The vehicle's windows are covered with dark fabrics, so that passengers cannot identify the path they will follow. You also have to disconnect cell phones. The van takes several turns until it reaches its destination: a Metinvest factory, the largest business group in Ukraine. In one of the warehouses there, anti-mine rollers for tanks are being assembled, a fundamental tool for opening a path between the lines of Russian defenses. They are a fundamental technology for the Ukrainian army, an example, of many, of the effort that the Ukrainian private sector is making to boost its military industry and stop being dependent on international aid.
The largest shareholder of Metinvest is Rinat Akhmetov. In Europe he is, above all, known for being the owner of the Shaktar Donetsk football club, a regular participant in the Champions League; In Ukraine he is the richest man in the country. Akhmetov is from Donetsk, the main city of the Donbas region, illegally annexed by Russia. Metinvest is a steel giant that has been affected by the war: it has lost the Azovstal steelworks, the largest in the country, in Mariupol, also occupied by the invader, and has stopped operating its coke factory, the largest in Europe at this time. fuel derived from basic coal for metallurgical furnaces, in the municipality of Avdiivka, currently besieged by Russian forces.
Akhmetov, his industrial conglomerate and also his football club left Donetsk when pro-Russian separatism took control of the city in 2014. He remained loyal to Ukraine, unlike other Donbas oligarchs who laid the foundations of their fortunes in the decade. of the nineties, starting with the privatization of the assets of the recently defunct Soviet Union. With the large-scale invasion beginning in February 2022, Akhmetov's influence has been challenged by new laws signed by President Volodymyr Zelensky, demanded by the EU to reduce the political power held by oligarchs. But his commitment to defending Ukraine has remained intact and for the first time, Metinvest has become involved in the defense industry. He has done so at a time when the presidency considers it a matter of life or death to build up the national military industry.
“If we don't help, no one will,” says Igor – he does not want to give his last name –, spokesman for the Metinvest project to produce anti-mine rollers. They manufacture an average of five or six a month, which gives them the workforce they have and, above all, the facilities that can be safe from recurring enemy bombings against industrial infrastructure. “Many Metinvest employees are in the army and we are short of factories,” confirms Igor. The loss of the Avdiivka coke plant is a serious setback, this spokesperson confirms, as is the shutdown of multiple coal mines in Donbas. Ukraine was one of the richest countries in the world in this mineral, but the war has reduced this available natural resource and prices have skyrocketed. The result is that if before the war, a ton of coal cost 300 dollars, its price is now 550 dollars, according to Igor.
Metinvest's anti-mine rollers became active last summer, in the middle of the counteroffensive on the Zaporizhia front. Russian defenses in this part of the battle line and also in Donetsk province are protected by the most densely mined fields that military analysts can remember in a war. Last September, members of the Tor special forces group estimated to EL PAÍS that on this front, for every square meter there could be five mines, including anti-personnel and anti-armor mines.
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Andrii is a colonel [también prefiere no facilitar su apellido], commander of a National Guard brigade fighting in the east of the country and who uses Metinvest rollers. They are adaptations of Soviet equipment but evolved to operate by exploding up to eight mines, compared to the five that Soviet blades can destroy before being replaced. Andrii adds that this roller is the first in Ukraine that can be attached to any model of armored vehicle.
Secret underground base
The meeting with Andrii takes place in a secret base dug underground. For security reasons, they require this newspaper not to indicate in which province they are located. They also do not allow the journalist to see how the rollers work. The more months of war that pass, the greater the secrecy and information limitations imposed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. If it is about the national production of weapons, the confidentiality is even greater. The commander confirms that Metinvest also supplies them with bulletproof vests, helmets and portable bunkers. But what they use most, developed in the country, are bomb and reconnaissance drones.
“I don't know how long the war will last,” says Andrii, “but we have a 1,300 kilometer border with Russia, we will always be at risk and we need our weapons production.” Signals from Ukraine's NATO allies indicate that aid will be more difficult to secure. The Republican Party blocks in the Congress and Senate of the United States the allocation of 61,000 million dollars (55,056 million dollars) that the White House wants to allocate for Ukraine in 2024; In the European Union, a support budget of 50 billion euros has also been blocked by the Hungarian Government, close to Moscow. Between summer and autumn, military shipments from Ukraine's Western partners have been the smallest of the war, 90% less compared to 2022, as confirmed by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in its latest report.
In this context, Zelensky's priority objective is to strengthen the national military industry and, above all, attract the main Western defense companies to establish production centers in Ukraine. Last September, the president summoned 250 representatives of military companies to a conference in kyiv to announce a plan with which he wants the country to become the largest arms manufacturer in the West. Nearly 40 of these companies committed to studying investments in production centers in the country invaded by Russia. The most important news in this regard came this December, when the German company Rheinmetall announced that in 2024 it would begin the production of Fuchs and Lynx infantry armored vehicles on Ukrainian soil with a local partner. Previously, the British BAE had already shown its commitment in the same direction.
NATO howitzer ammunition
Ukraine is already producing 155 millimeter caliber ammunition, the most basic projectiles for NATO howitzers, and has developed a new long-range missile, an evolution of the Neptun marine missiles, but the manufactured units are minimal, according to the Ministry of Defense . A great success of the Ukrainian industry at war is the monthly production in Kharkiv of six Bogdana howitzers, a domestic model of which in 2021 there was only one prototype.
Where Ukraine has proven to be most self-sufficient is in the development and production of drones, aerial and marine. But European manufacturers such as the German Quantuum have also registered to produce these vehicles in Ukraine, taking advantage of the tax advantages granted to them and, above all, the country's experience in the use of these aircraft in combat operations.
The main problem is that any industrial infrastructure can be a target of Russian fire, especially those that produce strategic material for the defense of Ukraine. Metinvest spokesman Igor is not aware of any underground factories being built. In his experience, the best protection is a good air defense system. But the closer to Russian positions, the less room for reaction an anti-aircraft battery has, especially against ballistic and cruise missiles. Even far from the enemy there is danger: EL PAÍS verified in 2022 how two Russian cruise missiles hit their target, an armor repair plant in Lviv, in western Ukraine, hundreds of kilometers from the front.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an American center for political and defense studies, published a pessimistic report on the potential of the Ukrainian military industry on December 4. The author of the document is Katerina Bondar, former advisor to the ministries of Defense and Finance of Ukraine. Her conclusions were bleak in all areas, the first being security: “There is no magic solution to reduce risk. Moving production underground, for example, would greatly increase costs and worsen working conditions. “Aircraft defense systems are scarce and cannot guarantee total protection.”
For Bondar, the efforts of companies like Metinvest or thousands of small private initiatives are a time-consuming exercise in providing solutions: “Large investments in new physical infrastructure are unlikely as long as the threat of a Russian attack persists. Corruption, unprofessional management, inefficient companies and technological deficits are just some of the challenges Kiev has to address before Ukraine can produce weapons systems and ammunition on a scale necessary for its enormous military needs.”
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