As Ukraine’s president discussed the peacekeeping forces needed to enforce a possible ceasefire and U.S. President Donald Trump called for an end to three years of war, Ukrainian officials this week courted investors private sector to help rebuild the country.
Oleksiy Sobolev, first deputy economy minister, outlined a $500 billion reconstruction effort that would pay strategic and financial dividends for Western investors, as kyiv accelerates privatization plans to attract foreign capital.
“It is the private sector that will make these investments,” Mr. Sobolev said on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, describing recent successes in small privatizations.
“We are considering further privatization. This is the right time to open up the biggest companies,” he added.
US President Donald Trump told WEF attendees on Thursday that he wants to end the war in Ukraine.
“Our efforts to secure a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine are now hopefully underway. It’s very important that we get there,” Trump said in remarks from Washington.
Mr. Trump’s nascent second administration has led some to reframe bilateral relations between the United States and Ukraine in terms of narrow economic interests.
“Your country first. Win with us,” read the sign welcoming visitors to the Ukraine House in Davos.
The debate on Ukraine is always about how to help Ukraine,” said Kurt Volker, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, adding: “We need to see Ukraine as part of the solution to so many problems we have to deal with”: “We must see Ukraine as part of the solution to the many problems we have to face.
He highlighted Ukraine’s potential as a producer of cleaner, lower energy for Europe, and as a proven arms supplier to a continent where defense spending is rising.
-President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told leaders Tuesday that domestic assembly lines already produce 40% of the weaponry used by Ukrainian forces on the front.
His special adviser, Oleksandr Kamyshyn, told Reuters that share had increased in part thanks to “dozens” of domestic joint ventures with defense companies from Western countries already investing in Ukrainian facilities.
“It’s not just a local office (or) a local factory, but also R&D,” Mr. Kamyshyn said in an interview. He declined to name his partners, but said more than ten of them were German, adding: “They are quite heavy […] : “These are big names in American industry.
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity sector, including strikes at coal-fired power plants dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, have also helped the country move toward cleaner, less centralized electricity production.
Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas announced in Davos a $470 million deal with DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, to expand a wind farm near the sea coast Black.
Henrik Andersen, CEO of Vestas, said it had been difficult to secure financing for a project in a country that many creditors consider a war zone, dragging out a process that usually takes weeks into talks that lasted “several quarters”.
Mr. Andersen said public funding was key to launching what would be a gargantuan rebuilding effort.
“Recovery begins before the peace agreement,” he said.
