Ukraine’s Zaporizhstal plant plans to shift much of its output to lower-value pig iron to keep exporting under the European Union’s new steel quotas. The move would idle up to half the plant’s capacity, its parent company, Metinvest, says.

The EU says the quotas shield its own producers from a global steel surplus. For Ukraine, whose steel entered duty-free after Brussels lifted tariffs after the 2022 invasion, they land on an industry already hit repeatedly by Russian strikes and cut off from the sea. The tariff-free quota fell by half on 1 July, with a 50% duty on anything above it.

Ukraine’s new allowance runs to roughly 1 million metric tons, about 60% below its 2025 shipments to the bloc, the Kyiv consultancy GMK Center calculates.

Steel makes up about 15% of Ukraine’s exports, and the EU buys close to four-fifths of it. The country’s Federation of Employers estimates the curbs could cost $1.2 billion in foreign earnings and cut GDP by 0.6%.

Falling back on pig iron

Pig iron, a semi-finished product, falls outside the quota, so lifting its share keeps the furnaces earning. But the switch would force the plant to reassign the workers behind those idled lines, Oleksandr Myronenko told Reuters. “Instead of support from the European Union, we face restrictions,” said the Metinvest chief operating officer.

Ukrainian mills cannot easily sell elsewhere: they are less efficient than cheaper Turkish and Chinese suppliers and are undercut in Europe’s own market, Myronenko said.

With the Black Sea route closed, importing coking coal through other European ports now runs $30 to $40 more a metric ton. Rail freight rose 30% this month, and an EU carbon charge has been applied to steel imports since 1 January.

A strike, and a plan in doubt

A Russian ballistic missile killed seven Zaporizhstal workers and shut the plant on 11 August.

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The fate of Metinvest’s $8 billion, 15-year plan to convert to cleaner “green steel” is unclear; Myronenko called the modernization unrealistic in wartime. Zaporizhstal is the largest employer in the Zaporizhzhia region and, with the rest of Metinvest, is majority-owned by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man.

On the plant floor, senior foreman Artem Kalinevych said: “As of today it’s not clear what comes next.”

During President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent visit to Serbia, he was asked whether Belgrade could continue to count on Ukraine’s position on Kosova. Zelenskyy reaffirmed that position, saying that Ukraine respects Serbia’s territorial integrity and international law and that its stance on Kosova’s “unilateral declaration of independence” remains unchanged.

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For many Kosovars, who have stood firmly with Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, this is difficult to understand. There is particular pain in hearing President Zelenskyy appear to dismiss what Kosovars endured—when it is precisely that memory of war, displacement, and atrocities that made Kosova one of Ukraine’s most instinctive supporters.

The danger of “unilateral”

There is a big problem with the way Kosova is being discussed by President Zelenskyy. Describing its independence simply as a “unilateral declaration” removes everything that matters about how Kosova actually became independent.

It also plays directly into an argument Vladimir Putin has been making for years: if the West accepted Kosova, why should it reject what Russia has done in Crimea, Donetsk, or Luhansk?

Ukraine should be dismantling that argument, not inadvertently reinforcing it. Kosova’s declaration was unilateral in one narrow sense: Serbia did not consent. But Ukrainians should understand the problem with treating the aggressor’s consent as the decisive test.

Imagine telling a community in Ukraine devastated by Russian forces that Moscow must retain a permanent veto over the political settlement that determines its future.

Kosova’s path to independence

Kosova did not simply decide one day in 2008 to break away from Serbia. The declaration came at the end of a process that had lasted years. Kosova’s path to statehood came through the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia, a federation that ultimately fragmented into seven independent states, and after years of systematic repression of Kosova’s overwhelmingly Albanian population. The culmination was the 1998–99 Kosova war.

Serbian and Yugoslav forces conducted a campaign of violence and forced displacement against Kosovar Albanians. Nearly 800,000 people were expelled from Kosova in a matter of months because of a violent ethnic cleansing campaign of the Serbian army against Kosovars.

Hundreds of thousands more were internally displaced. Thousands of civilians were killed, cities and villages burned, homes destroyed, and women subjected to sexual violence.

When the war ended in 1999, Kosova did not declare independence. Nor did Albania invade Kosova and annex it. Instead, Kosova was placed under UN Security Council Resolution 1244. For almost nine years, its institutions developed under international administration while its final status remained unresolved.

And then there were negotiations. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari to lead talks between Belgrade and Pristina over Kosova’s final status. After those negotiations failed to produce an agreement, Ahtisaari concluded that returning Kosova to Serbian rule was no longer a viable option and recommended internationally supervised independence.

This matters because Kosova’s declaration in February 2008 did not reject that international process. It embraced it. The declaration committed Kosova to implementing the Ahtisaari settlement and invited continued international involvement, including an EU rule-of-law mission and NATO’s security presence.

Call the final declaration unilateral if you wish. The process that produced it was anything but.

What the ICJ found

Even after independence, the issue was subjected to further international scrutiny. At Serbia’s initiative, the UN General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice to examine the declaration. In 2010, the court concluded that Kosova’s declaration “did not violate international law.” It also found that it did not violate UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

None of this means Kosova’s path to independence was simple or uncontested. Clearly, it was not. But reducing this history to the word “unilateral” creates precisely the opening Russia needs to manufacture a parallel with Ukraine.

Crimea breaks the comparison

Putin has used Kosova for years to claim that the West created a precedent Russia merely followed: Kosova separated from Serbia without Belgrade’s consent, so why should Crimea be different? Because that is clearly where the similarity ends.

Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk were annexed following a Russian invasion. Moscow occupied Ukrainian territory, installed or backed proxy authorities, staged referendums under military occupation, and ultimately claimed Ukrainian land as its own.

Kosova emerged from an international process designed to resolve a conflict; Russia manufactured “independence” as an instrument of conquest. Ukraine should insist on that distinction every time Moscow invokes Kosova.

Ukraine understandably approaches Kosova cautiously. A country fighting for its territorial integrity is wary of anything that might appear to weaken that principle. But acknowledging the exceptional circumstances of Kosova does not weaken Ukraine’s argument. Treating Kosova and Crimea as comparable cases does.

Russia wants Kosova to be its precedent. Ukraine does not have to accept the premise. Ukraine, in fact, has a particular interest in explaining the difference, because Ukrainians know better than almost anyone what Russian-manufactured "self-determination” actually looks like. That is not Kosova’s story.

Kosova chose Ukraine first

There is also an irony here that is difficult for Kosovars to ignore. Kosova has stood with Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion. It imposed sanctions against Russia and Belarus, provided assistance to Ukraine, and offered refuge to Ukrainian journalists.

It did all of this without being recognized by Kyiv—Kosovars did not need recognition to know which side they were on.

Ukraine’s experience resonates deeply in Kosova. We know what it means to live through war and displacement. We also know what it means when a larger neighbor invokes history to argue that it has the right to determine your future.

That does not make the two cases identical—but it should make Ukrainians skeptical when Russia tries to turn Kosova into a justification for its own imperial project.

Kosovars did not expect President Zelenskyy to arrive in Belgrade and announce that Ukraine had suddenly changed its position on Kosova. But it is reasonable to expect Kyiv to revisit its approach to Kosova and to recognize the process by which Kosova came to be, a process that Ukraine’s closest allies today understood, supported, and ultimately recognized.

That requires abandoning a framing that reduces Kosova’s history to a “unilateral declaration” and inadvertently gives credibility to the parallel Russia has spent years trying to construct. For Kosovars, the hope is that a more honest understanding of that history will eventually lead Ukraine to reconsider recognition, too.

Not as a reward for Kosova’s support for Ukraine, but as the natural outcome of seeing Kosova on its own terms rather than through the precedent Moscow wants it to be.

Putin has spent years trying to make Kosova his precedent. Ukraine should take that argument away from him. Doing so would bring Kyiv closer to the position of the allies standing beside it today—and perhaps, in time, recognition would follow.

Nezir Sinani

Nezir Sinani is executive director of the B4Ukraine Coalition, an alliance of more than 100 civil society organizations pressing companies and financial institutions to stop enabling Russia’s war against Ukraine. A longtime Kosovar activist, his work is rooted in Kosova’s own experience of war and displacement.

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