Metinvest and the Heart of Azovstal initiative will continue supporting Mariupol’s defenders until the last captive returns
Metinvest Group, together with Rinat Akhmetov’s charitable initiative Heart of Azovstal, will continue to support the defenders of Mariupol until the last of them returns home from captivity. Metinvest’s Chief Operating Officer, Oleksandr Myronenko, made this pledge at the Heart of Azovstal: Growing Together conference in Kyiv on 18 February. The conference marked the project’s third anniversary and set out its plans for 2026. Over the past three years, Heart of Azovstal – part of Rinat Akhmetov’s Steel Front military initiative – has supported more than 8,000 Mariupol defenders. They have received over 28,000 instances of assistance. Among other services, this includes physical and psychological rehabilitation, prosthetics, dedicated apartments for defenders with Group I and II disabilities, and support with education and employment. In late 2025, Rinat Akhmetov decided to extend the project for another year and allocated nearly UAH600 million in additional funding. This increased th