Ukraine determined to shield and rebuild shattered cities

Berlin — Ukraine and its allies drummed up support to protect Ukrainian cities from Russian missiles at a conference in Berlin on Tuesday and rallied international businesses to put their faith, and billions of dollars, into post-war reconstruction.

Kyiv hopes the recovery conference will cement its credentials as a future member of the EU that is worthy of huge injections of reconstruction financing — even as Russian forces continue to make slow advances in Ukraine’s east.

Switzerland hosts an international conference this weekend to seek a path to peace in Ukraine, but it has been shunned by China and dismissed as a waste of time by Russia, which was not invited to attend.

Speaking alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia had already wiped out enough energy infrastructure to power the cities of Berlin and Munich combined. He hoped to come away from the conference with pledges of billions of euros for defence and agreements on building a new and more modern energy system.

“Ukraine is suffering from the most destructive form of the Russian view of energy as a weapon,” Zelensky said.

Citing World Bank estimates that Ukraine could need $500bn over a decade, Scholz said companies had to be offered a business case for investing, and talked up Ukraine’s potential in sectors including renewables, IT and pharmaceuticals.

He also said Germany was sending more air defence systems, missiles and munitions to bolster the capital Kyiv’s defences against a barrage of Russian attacks on cities and critical infrastructure, more than two years after Russia launched a full-scale invasion.

“The best kind of reconstruction is the one that doesn’t have to happen at all,” Scholz said.

A Russian campaign of aerial bombardment that began in March has inflicted such heavy damage to generating capacity that blackouts are having to be scheduled in the capital Kyiv and across Ukraine.

In an  interview at the conference, the mayor of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, said Western weapons and the permission to use them to strike targets just inside Russia had helped to restore calm.

Speaking alongside Scholz and Zelensky, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced agreements with banks worth €1.4bn to help attract private investment for Ukraine. She also said the EU would deliver €1.9bn to Ukraine from its own assistance programme by the end of the month, and that Kyiv would benefit from interest income from frozen Russian assets.

“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin must fail, and Ukraine must prevail,” she said. “And we must help Ukraine to rise from the ashes and to be the master of its own future. This means, first and foremost, that we must provide Ukraine with the means to defend itself.”

Italy announced a package of €140m for Ukrainian infrastructure and its foreign minister said Rome was ready to send a further package to support air defence.

“This reconstruction of Ukraine is in many ways the thing Putin most dreads,” British foreign minister David Cameron said. “He knows a successful Ukraine, a reformed Ukraine, a financially successful Ukraine, all those things it can be is the greatest possible defeat.”

The Berlin conference was tainted this week by the resignation of a top Ukrainian reconstruction official and prominent former legislator who said “systemic obstacles” were making his job untenable.

Reuters