Leaders of 47 countries held a conference in Paris on Tuesday to organize immediate aid to Ukraine, a daily target of Russian attacks, and to begin preparing for reconstruction.
The Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, in his speech before the conference, estimated at around 800 million euros the emergency aid that Ukraine needs in terms of energy, a daily target of Russian attacks, before the imminent boreal winter.
“This will cost around 800 million euros”the Ukrainian president specified in a videoconference speech.
After the conferences in Lugano, Warsaw and Berlin, the Paris meeting seeks to neutralize the strategy deployed by Russia since October with the aim of making the population suffer and weakening the resistance.
“Russia acts in a cowardly way” and “attempts to sow terror among the population” by attacking civilian infrastructure, which are “acts of war,” French President Emmanuel Macron said at the start of the conference.
The will of the international community is to help the Ukrainians to “resist during this winter” against a Russia, whose objective is to “plunge them into the dark and into the cold”, he added, reported the AFP news agency.
The meeting, baptized “Solidarity with the Ukrainian people”, began at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the presence of the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal.
Conference participants will focus on five fundamental sectors – energy, water, food, health and transport– to enable Ukraine to retain its essential infrastructure.
“The immediate objective (…) is that the Ukrainian electricity network does not collapse, that we do not have a blackout for several weeks, that the water does not freeze in the pipes,” French diplomatic sources were quoted as saying by AFP.
This effort must entail repairing the infrastructure after each Russian bombardment so that the population can get through the winter and maintain morale.
“Heads of state, heads of government, ministers” from 47 countries will participate in the conference, indicated the Elysee, which should announce the amount collected for the cause.
The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, had planned to intervene by videoconference.
China will be the great absentee from the conferencealthough there will be ambassadors from the Gulf countries and India, a symbol of solidarity that goes beyond European and North American borders.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) will also be presentalthough no new announcements are expected from him.
The session at the Foreign Ministry will end in the early afternoon with a press conference by the head of French diplomacy, Catherine Colonna, and the Ukrainian Prime Minister.
The conference will continue at the Pierre Mendès-France center of the Ministry of Economy and will become a “bilateral for the resilience and reconstruction of Ukraine” in which it will try to mobilize French companies for this effort.
Half a thousand French firms, from stock market giants to start-ups in the digital sector, were invited to participate in this long-term initiative.
The cost of the war for the country is immense.
“We had stated in early September that the cost would be around $350 billion, but this will cover no more than the period from the start of the war to June 1,” said Anna Bjerd, World Bank vice president for Europe and Central Asia.
A new estimate will be published “at the beginning of 2023” and will be undoubtedly higher, he warned.
The Ukrainian economy has already contracted by 33% by the war started by Moscow on February 24.
“With the recent attacks in the country, the contraction will be stronger, we can expect it to be closer to 40%,” Bjerd said.
The Washington-based institution did not make forecasts for next year due to the “great uncertainty” of the current situation.
This Monday, the leaders of the G7 decided in a virtual summit to launch a “platform” to “coordinate financial aid to Ukraine,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced.
