The eventual recovery of Ukraine through a $750bn (£620bn) recovery plan is the shared task of the entire democratic world, Ukraine’s president said on Monday at the first detailed event to map out a physical future for the country should it survive as a Western nation after the Russian invasion.
Speaking via video link at a high-level conference in Lugano, Switzerland, attended by many senior Ukrainian politicians, Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the task ahead was colossal, arguing that the war was a battle of views in which Russia was determined to destroy the physical and moral tissue.
He added that the recovery process, led by a Ukrainian national recovery council, would allow his country to deepen its ties with Europe.
The scale of the task is such that there is a danger of multilateral bodies duplicating bids, as well as tensions between plans developed by Ukraine itself and those drawn up by bodies such as the European Investment Bank. The willingness of the private sector to invest billions in Ukraine will depend on the country’s security and Ukraine’s ability to resist the clutches of the oligarchs.
Denys Shmykhal, Ukraine’s prime minister, said Ukraine’s direct infrastructure losses amounted to more than $100 billion, adding that more than 1,200 educational institutions, 200 hospitals and thousands of kilometers of gas pipelines, water and electricity networks, roads and railways were were destroyed or damaged.
He said ordinary Ukrainians had submitted 200,000 entries to an open government electronic map documenting incidents of destruction.
He argued there would be three stages of recovery, which together could require more than $750 billion in investment, a third of which would come from the private sector and some from Russian reparations and asset freezes.
He said: “The Russian authorities unleashed this bloody war and caused this mass destruction and must be held accountable.”
The first stage will be an immediate implementation plan, starting with emergency humanitarian assistance such as restoring water supplies and bridges; a medium-term framework from 2023 to 2025 to bring life back to destroyed communities through the reconstruction of schools, hospitals and housing, and finally a long-term modernization vision from 2026 to 2032 for a Ukrainian green digital economy that finally leaves the Soviet era behind and prepares the country for possible EU membership.
The draft framework, consulted on by more than 2,000 experts over six weeks, contains proposals for overseas-sponsored regional plans and a 24-sector recovery plan designed to ensure sectors such as domestic energy and agriculture can to meet EU standards, and secure 7% annual growth. But the blow to Ukraine’s economy is such that Kyiv needs another $30 billion to stay afloat between now and December.
Shmyhal insisted that Ukraine’s reform process would continue, arguing that changes introduced before the invasion, including digitization and decentralization of government, had contributed to the country’s resilience in the face of the Russian onslaught.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, laid out plans for an EU recovery platform that would map out Ukraine’s investment needs, channel resources, shape strategic choices and coordinate multilateral bodies as well as private firms. The Commission is looking at different ways to raise these funds, including grants and loans, as well as joint borrowing, similar to the EU Pandemic Recovery Fund.
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She has repeatedly emphasized the need for reform and transparency on the part of the Ukrainian government to ensure that corruption does not undermine the integrity of any recovery program. She said: “We’ve never done it on this scale before,” adding that donors will need to know not only that their money is going to a good cause, “but that it will be spent effectively and efficiently with maximum impact on the people of Ukraine.” .
Olena Zelenska, the wife of the president, told the conference that the future spiritual reconstruction will be as important as the material reconstruction.
Ukraine currently has 8 million internally displaced people, 6 million forced to live abroad, most of them children, and 22,000 teachers no longer working. She showed pictures of destroyed schools and hospitals and said that in today’s world it cannot be seen as someone else’s war.
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