Russian firms analyze the impact of events in Ukraine

Russian companies and banks are looking at events in Ukraine with dismay because they could lose billions in investment and business in the former Soviet republic. Russian banks are Ukraine's largest lenders, accounting for 12 percent of the sector with about US $ 28 billion of exposure, including Sberbank, VEB and VTB.

The companies have assets in the oil and gas sector, telecommunications and metallurgy, as well as in the mining industry. Most of the facilities are concentrated in the Russian-speaking eastern regions, which produce coal, metals, chemical products and where nuclear power plants are located. The southeast is the most industrially developed region of Ukraine.

Russian companies that have interests in Ukraine:

1. Aluminum giant Rusal owns the Nikolaev Alumina plant in Ukraine, and the city of Nikolaev, its second largest alumina asset. The work is going well here. The company also owns the Zaporozhye alumina and aluminum complex, which was suspended several years ago due to low aluminum prices.

2. Evraz has a steel plant in Ukraine in Dnepropetrovsk and sells its products in Ukraine, Russia and the Middle East. Its annual capacity is about 900 thousand tons of pig iron, 820 thousand tons of crude steel and 700 thousand tons of rolled products. Evraz and its largest shareholder billionaire Roman Abramovich are also involved in the Sukha Balka iron ore project near Donetsk with an annual production capacity of about 2.5 million tons of iron ore, which is supplied to local enterprises as well as abroad.

3. Mechel has a DMZ steel plant in Donetsk, with an annual capacity of about 1 million tons of steel per year, supplying steel products to more than 30 countries. The Mechel Group, owned by billionaire Igor Zyuzin, tried to sell the plant back to its previous owner, businessman Vadim Varshavsky.