On July 30, Ukraine received 3.47 billion euros from the European Union under its 90 billion euro loan programme, earmarked for drones including long-range jet-powered models, for missiles, and for Gripen fighter jets. The Council of the EU separately approved changes to the Ukraine Plan opening the way to a further 8.3 billion euros this year. [1]
The day before, the Southern Mining and Processing Plant at Kryvyi Rih, one of Ukraine's major iron producers and part of Rinat Akhmetov's Metinvest group, began suspending production. [2]
The company's stated reason is worth reading in its own words: the decision was made "due to the constant attacks by the aggressor country on civilian merchant ships heading to Ukrainian Black Sea ports," and "several shiploads of iron ore, which were supposed to be exported, accumulated in both the ports and the warehouses." The company urged authorities to "take maximum measures to protect port infrastructure and merchant ships from enemy attacks." [2]
A mine does not stop because it runs out of ore. It stops because the ore has nowhere to go.
The two events are not in conflict, and nothing about the EU tranche is wasted. Ukraine needs air defence and it needs strike capability, and 3.47 billion euros of it arriving is a serious act of support. What the pairing shows is a gap in the shape of the support: the money buys things that fly, and the thing being lost this week floats.
Ukraine's capacity to pay for its own war rests on exports, and its exports rest on the Black Sea corridor. Russia has spent months attacking the merchant traffic in it, and the response has been mostly diplomatic. When the attacks succeed, they do not show up as territory lost. They show up as a mine at Kryvyi Rih putting its workers on maintenance duty while the ore piles up.
Metinvest says it plans to resume in August. Whether it can depends on something no fighter jet in the tranche is tasked to do.
