ArcelorMittal Halts Ukraine Steel Plant for Good After Fourth Missile Strike in Five Weeks, Books $1 Billion Loss

Since ArcelorMittal first disclosed missile damage at its Kryvyi Rih plant on August 17, the site has been hit three more times, and the company said Friday, September 25, it will not attempt to restart operations there.

ArcelorMittal, the Luxembourg-based steel and mining group, told the Ukrainian government it "is unable to safely and sustainably restart operations" at ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih. The most recent strike hit Monday, September 21. Across the four attacks over five weeks, five employees were killed and 17 were injured, one of whom remains in critical condition, according to the company's statement.

ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih CEO Mauro Longobardo called it a decision made "with deep regret," saying the plant's workforce had been "the embodiment of bravery" since the war started in February 2022. The company says it is now working with Kyiv to preserve the plant's infrastructure so that "when peace finally returns, options for restarting production remain available." There is no restart date and no plan for one.

The Money

ArcelorMittal expects to record a non-cash impairment charge of roughly $1 billion, driven mainly by writing down property, plant and equipment at the site, the company said. That comes on top of more than $700 million the company has already funneled into the Ukrainian subsidiary since 2022 just to keep it running, according to ArcelorMittal's own statement.

This is not the company's first billion-dollar hit from the war. Global Banking & Finance Review noted ArcelorMittal already booked about a $1 billion impairment on its Ukraine operations back in 2022. Two impairments of similar size, four years apart, reflect how the war has ground down Ukraine's industrial base.

ArcelorMittal's stock carries a Hold rating with a €55 price target from analysts tracked by TipRanks, and the company's market cap stands around €47.47 billion. A $1 billion non-cash charge on a company that size is negligible for shareholders. For the roughly thousands of Ukrainian workers whose jobs depended on that plant staying open, it means something different entirely.

The Diplomacy Isn't Moving Either

While the steel plant news broke, the diplomatic track over ending the war remains stalled on the most basic question: where would Putin and Zelensky even meet. Zelensky told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle he is willing to sit down with Putin at the G20 summit in Miami, scheduled for December 14-15, saying "we have to meet, to speak, and make decisions," according to Breitbart's account of the interview.

The Kremlin shut that down immediately. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told AFP in New Delhi it is "impossible" and repeated Moscow's position that any meeting can only happen in the Russian capital, offering instead: "There is a readiness to meet him in Moscow." Zelensky has previously said Putin ignored an invitation to meet at a G7 summit in France, and Putin has rejected multiple face-to-face offers since. Whether Putin even attends the Miami G20 has not been confirmed by either government.

Trump's special envoy Jared Kushner told a security forum in Kyiv he hopes to announce "next steps" in the talks within a couple of weeks, after he and Steve Witkoff visited both Moscow and Kyiv. Kyiv officials separately warned that intensified strikes on Ukraine's energy sector could shave 1.5 points off GDP this year and that the coming winter will be "very difficult," a government estimate that has not been independently verified but tracks with the pattern of industrial damage seen at Kryvyi Rih.

Zelensky also told Fox News Digital, following a meeting with President Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, that the risk of Russia attacking a NATO-bordering country with drones, missiles, or ground forces is "very high," arguing Putin could try to fracture European unity by targeting a country outside Ukraine. This is Zelensky's stated assessment, not a confirmed Russian plan, and no source documents an actual attack on another European state.

A reasonable skeptic of Kyiv's framing would point out that Ukraine has an obvious incentive to paint the threat picture as broadly as possible to keep Western military aid flowing, and that Moscow's insistence on hosting any summit in the Russian capital is a standard negotiating position, not proof it is uninterested in talks. Neither claim is resolved by anything in the public record right now.

What is resolved is the steel plant. ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih is offline indefinitely, its equipment written down by roughly $1 billion, and its future tied to a peace process that, as of this week, cannot even agree on a meeting location.