A group of about 70 countries on Tuesday pledged over $1 billion in new aid for Ukraine at a donor conference in Paris, including about $440 million to help repair the country’s energy infrastructure.
According to French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, the remaining over $500 million in new funds for Ukraine will go toward the country’s water, transportation, health, and food sectors.
The pledge came after Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said Ukraine would need $1 billion just to repair Ukraine’s power grid, and heating systems as Russian missile and drone strikes have decimated the country’s energy infrastructure.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the donor conference via video link and put the price tag for Ukraine’s energy infrastructure a little lower than Shmyhal did, saying the country needed about $850 million for energy repairs.
But even if Ukraine secures additional funding for its energy infrastructure, it’s unlikely sufficient repairs could be made quickly enough. Shmyhal said half of Ukraine’s infrastructure facilities have been damaged, and the Russian strikes will likely persist as Ukraine is stepping up attacks inside Russian territory, reportedly with support from the US, which risks major escalation.
Ukrainian civilians are facing a dire situation as they are without power and heat, and there is no end to the fighting in sight. Zelensky maintains Russia must withdraw from all the territory it has captured for any peace talks to happen, but the position is a non-starter for Moscow.
Its really easy to “donate” money that isn’t yours.
Meanwhile the Biden Administration is kicking Yemen down the long road of starvation, misery, and squalor….no aid for that country, not in a way that would matter most: US — Get out of the business of supplying aid to the Saudi Air Force! Now!
We have tremendous Humanitarian impulses… We just need to follow thru and Implement them and we need to stop being a Universal Arms Dealer…
Yes Donna, we do. Unfortunately, those in charge don’t.
The ordinary people absolutely do – but keep voting for hawks into every office in the land – so much that you cannot find a single true anti war politician in Congress. That is the sad state of our MIC government.
Money to rebuild what will certainly be destroyed again, unless a certain couple of people ( I use that term loosely) decide that negotiations are preferable to continued destruction.
Zelboy knows full well that his terms for “negotiations “ are completely unacceptable to Russia, thus indicating his willingness to sacrify his nation and its people.