On Oct. 18, President Viktor Yanukovych attended a ceremony to open the site and lay the first stone of a new air separation unit at Metinvest's Yenakiyeve Steel Mill in Donetsk Oblast. The project of French company Air Liquide is going to produce oxygen, nitrogen and argon for the mill worth 130 million euros.
The volume of Air Liquide’s investment will be financed jointly with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development that provided an 85 million euro loan. Metinvest, the company owned by the richest Ukrainian billionaire, Rinat Akhmetov, announced spending about 26 million euro on the project.
Yanukovych praised the tycoon’s company for attracting investments to the nation’s economy and modernizing the metallurgical industry. Akhmetov accompanied Yanukovych on the president’s visit to the mill.
Other top officials were also in attendance, including head of Yanukovych’s administration Serhiy Lyovochkin, Deputy Prime Minister Boris Kolesnikov, Economy Minister Petro Poroshenko and Finance Minister Yuriy Kolobov.
The president’s elder son Oleksandr Yanukovych was present as well. The head of state arrived in Yenakiyeve from Donetsk where he visited the Fifth International Investment Forum.
Because of Yanukovych’s visit to the oblast, police took unprecedented security measures mobilizing forces for guarding the places and roads where Yanukovych appeared. The traffic in Donetsk and Yenakiyeve was obstructed, causing long traffic jams resented by locals.
(Story and photos by Denis Rafalsky)
