LUGANO, Switzerland —
Ukraine told an
international conference Monday that it will cost an estimated $750 billion to
rebuild the war-shattered country, a task President Volodymyr Zelensky said was
the shared duty of the democratic world.
اضافة اعلان
Speaking at the opening of the Ukraine Recovery
Conference in Switzerland,
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal described the
massive destruction and acknowledged the needs were towering.
Ukraine’s
recovery, he said, “is already estimated at $750 billion. We believe that the
key source of recovery should be the confiscated assets of Russia and Russian
oligarchs.”
“The Russian authorities unleashed this bloody war,
they caused this massive destruction, and they should be held accountable for
it,” he said.
Speaking via video message,
Zelensky stressed that
“reconstruction of Ukraine is not a local task of a single nation.”
“It is a common task of the whole democratic world,”
he said, insisting that “reconstruction of Ukraine is the biggest contribution
to the support of global peace.”
The two-day conference, held under tight security in
the picturesque southern Swiss city of
Lugano, had been planned well before the
invasion, and had originally been slated to discuss reforms in Ukraine before
being repurposed to focus on reconstruction.
As billions of dollars in aid flow into
Ukraine,
however, lingering concerns about widespread corruption in the country mean
far-reaching reforms remain in focus and will be a condition for any recovery
plan decided here.
‘Fight against corruption’
Zelensky’s Swiss counterpart
and co-host of the conference, Ignazio Cassis, stressed that reforms remained
front and center, with the aim of the meeting to lay “the groundwork for an
effective and transparent political process.”
He said he was convinced that Ukraine’s resilience
in the face of the Russian invasion was largely due to the reforms already
implemented in the country.
“It is crucial that these efforts continue
unwaveringly, especially in the fight against corruption, improving
transparency and the independence of the judiciary, and that they are not stalled
by the war.”
He hailed that Ukraine had sent a large delegation
of around 100 people to the conference, with Smyhal joined by speaker of
parliament Rousland Stefantchouk and five government ministers.
In all, around 1,000 people are attending the conference,
including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who let out an
enthusiastic “Slava Ukraini” (glory to Ukraine) after insisting on the
importance of rebuilding a Ukraine better than before the war.
“Ukraine can emerge from this on a path towards a
stronger and more modern country, with a modernized judiciary, with stronger
institutions, with a solid track-record to fight against corruption, but also
with a greener, more digital and more resilient economy,” she said.
While the EU is intent on helping Ukraine win the
war, she said, “we must also make sure that Ukraine wins the peace that will
come for sure.”
‘Decades’
Lugano is not a pledging
conference but will instead attempt to lay out the principles and priorities
for a rebuilding process aimed to begin even as the war rages.
It will conclude Tuesday with a Lugano Declaration,
which Cassis said would spell out the “framework for a long-term reconstruction
process.”
Questions have been raised about the value in
discussing reconstruction when there is no end in sight to the war.
Organisers and participants stress, however, the
need to lay the groundwork well in advance, as was done with the wildly
successful Marshall Plan, a US initiative that pumped vast sums in foreign aid
into Western Europe to help the continent rebuild and recover after World War
II.
The task is daunting
The
Kyiv School of Economics has estimated the damage so far to buildings and infrastructure at nearly $104
billion and that Ukraine’s economy has already suffered losses of up to $600
billion.
Simon Pidoux, the Swiss ambassador in charge of the
conference, said that it was too early to try to estimate all the needs,
insisting Lugano instead should provide “a compass” for the work ahead.
“I think the effort will last for years, if not
decades,” he said.
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