‘I was five seconds from death’: Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, on owning Shakhtar and resisting Russia
In a rare interview the businessman discusses football, his ownership of the Azovstal steelworks and why he is optimistic about the future
It is the morning after Russia’s heaviest aerial raid on Kyiv in several months. At least 25 people have been killed and, as always, those emerging from a sleepless night are the lucky ones. Rinat Akhmetov meets the Guardian at the end of a paved driveway half an hour from the city centre. Shakhtar Donetsk’s owner rarely gives interviews and his whereabouts have been a subject of conjecture during the war.
But he is here in Ukraine, speaking to mark the 90th birthday of a club whose tribulations over the past dozen years have been unmatched. It is also 30 years since Akhmetov, the richest person in Ukraine and arguably eastern Europe’s most influential businessman, became president of Shakhtar. The club has been a labour of love, the straightforward face of a career whose complexities beyond football have been widely documented. Akhmetov’s influence spreads across the country and beyond, most visibly in the form of places such as Azovstal, the iron and steelworks that became symbolic of a nation’s resilience in 2022.