At the 2025 Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC) in Rome, Yuriy Ryzhenkov, Chief Executive Officer of Metinvest Group, talked about how Ukrainian businesses have managed to remain resilient during the war and the role human capital plays in this.
The conversation took place during a panel discussion titled “People at the Centre – A New Mandate for Employers.” Alongside Metinvest, the panel featured leaders from the Ministry of Economy, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Naftogaz of Ukraine, PrivatBank and DTEK.
“Metinvest is probably the largest Ukrainian industrial group, with its enterprises located near the front lines in Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Dnipro regions. We are also one of the largest donors to Ukraine’s Defence Forces. More than 10,000 of our employees have served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. That is why, since the beginning of the full-scale war, we have come to truly realise that people are our most valuable asset.
FACT
During the URC, Metinvest Group became a signatory of the Human Capital Resilience Charter (HCR). The document calls on employers in Ukraine to participate in the rebuilding of the economy by supporting employees, especially veterans and displaced employees.
Today, we are experiencing a staff shortage. The Group requires approximately 4,000 additional employees to operate normally. Therefore, we have had to rethink our attitude to human capital. This involves several areas of work.
The first is an individual approach to hiring and retraining employees at our enterprises.
The second is a focus on the reintegration of war veterans. We currently have more than 1,000 defenders who have returned to the Group following their service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And we strive to become the number-one company for those returning from various units of Ukraine’s defence forces.
The third is the shift in gender roles. Women now hold positions that were previously considered to be male-dominated roles, including as excavator operators in Zaporizhzhia and as production workers at Kamet Steel.
And finally, the training of a new generation of specialists at Metinvest Polytechnic. We established the mining and metals university before the full-scale invasion, but it has now become a fully-fledged institution of higher education, training new engineers and technical specialists for our Group and for the country.
The key thing we have understood over the past three and a half years is that success can never be achieved alone. Partnership is what matters most. That is what makes today’s event important. That is what makes the Charter [the Human Capital Resilience Charter (HCR) – ed.] important, which we are joining to achieve common goals. This is our country. It is for us to rebuild it. It is for us to restore it. This is the position of our shareholder, Rinat Akhmetov, which is shared by all the Group’s leaders. But we can only achieve this through partnership.”
