Emmanuel Macron will head to kyiv – “before mid-March”, he said – after postponing his planned visit in February. No doubt accompanied by business leaders, he will not only talk about security with his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, but also business and reconstruction. In the meantime, the President of the Republic is occupying the field and was due to welcome around twenty European leaders to the Elysée on Monday February 26 for a “support meeting” to a country ravaged by war and just animated by a slim hope of peace.
From Washington to Tokyo via Brussels, Western leaders and international institutions know that the foundations of a reconstruction plan must also be laid without delay, even if the Ukrainians are already repairing the damage caused by an enemy on a day-to-day basis. who wants to achieve a military victory, ruin the country’s economy and break the morale of those whom Vladimir Putin once called his ” brothers “.
Homes, schools, hospitals, administrative premises, ports and roads, transport, water and electricity networks were destroyed or damaged, especially in the Kiev region and the eastern oblasts. Around 10% of housing is uninhabitable. Added to this destruction are the devastation on agriculture and the environment from the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper and the threat of millions of Russian mines scattered across the invaded territories.
As for human capital, it has been cruelly undermined. Mr. Zelensky announced on Sunday – and for the first time – that 31,000 soldiers had been killed (without giving the number of wounded), as well as tens of thousands of civilians in the occupied territories. Irreparable, these losses will weigh heavily on the ability of their loved ones to rebuild the country and rebuild themselves. A formidable question is gradually emerging: are the Ukrainian youth of the 2020s a “lost generation”?
Need for “private capital”
On a material level alone, the latest calculations from the World Bank, the UN, the European Union and kyiv are dizzying: 140 billion euros in direct damage; 450 billion to recover over ten years, or 2.8 times the gross domestic product (GDP). “The quicker we act, the less it will cost in the long term, and the more we give the country the capacity to continue to defend itself militarily”warns the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Odile Renaud-Basson in an interview with the magazine The Great Continent. Emergency operations must be accompanied by a double investment, in critical infrastructure and human capital, she adds.
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