Metinvest Group, together with Rinat Akhmetov’s charitable project Heart of Azovstal, will continue to support the defenders of Mariupol until the last of them returns home from captivity, said the company’s Chief Operating Officer Alexander Mironenko at the conference Heart of Azovstal. Growing Together in Kyiv.
“We are strengthening veteran programs and creating new opportunities for education and professional development. Because veterans are a force that will help rebuild Ukrainian industry and the country after the war,” said Mironenko, whose words are quoted in a press release.
According to him, in three years of operation, this project, which is part of the Steel Front military initiative, has supported more than 8,000 defenders of Mariupol. They received more than 28,000 types of assistance: physical and psychological rehabilitation, prosthetics, their own apartments (for defenders with I and II disability groups), support in obtaining education and employment, etc.
It is noted that at the end of 2025, Akhmetov decided to continue the project for another year and allocated an additional UAH 600 million for its financing, bringing the total amount of aid over four years to UAH 2.2 billion.
This year, the Azovstal Hearts program will continue to support Mariupol defenders returning from captivity. It is planned to provide another 100 apartments to defenders with I-II disability groups under the At Home program — a total of 400 defenders will receive apartments over four years.
The report also notes that the post-traumatic growth methodology will be extended to the national level, and pilot training for communities working with veterans will be conducted in Bucha and Kamensk.
For its part, Metinvest is creating conditions for war veterans, including defenders of Mariupol, to integrate into enterprise teams, receive training, and build careers, as well as veteran communities and public associations where they can receive support. More than a thousand war veterans currently work at the group’s enterprises.
Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of mining and metallurgical enterprises. Its enterprises are located in Ukraine – in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk regions – as well as in European countries. The main shareholders of the holding are SCM Group (71.24%) and Smart Steel Limited (23.76%). Metinvest Holding LLC is the managing company of the Metinvest Group.
