The U.S. and EU are hoping to attract $800 billion of public and private funds to help rebuild Ukraine once Russia ends its full-scale invasion, according to a document obtained by POLITICO, APA reports.
The 18-page document outlines a 10-year plan to guarantee Ukraine’s recovery with a fast-tracked path toward EU membership. The European Commission circulated the plans with EU capitals ahead of the leaders’ summit Thursday evening where the document, dated Jan. 22, was addressed, according to three EU officials and diplomats who were granted anonymity to talk about the sensitive topic.
While Brussels and Washington are lining up hundreds of billions of dollars in long-term funding and pitching Ukraine as a future EU member and investment destination, the strategy hinges on a ceasefire that remains elusive — leaving the prosperity plan vulnerable as long as the fighting continues.
The funding strategy stretches until 2040 alongside an immediate 100-day operational plan to get the project off the ground. But the prosperity plan will struggle to attract outside investment if the conflict rumbles on, according to the world’s largest money manager, BlackRock, which is advising on the reconstruction plan in a pro-bono capacity.
“Think about it. If you're a pension fund, you're fiduciary towards your clients, your pensioners. It's nearly impossible to invest into a war zone,” BlackRock’s vice chairman, Philipp Hildebrand, said Wednesday in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “I think it has to be sequenced and that's going to take some time.”
The prosperity plan is part of a 20-point peace blueprint that the U.S. is attempting to broker between Kyiv and Moscow. It explicitly assumes that security guarantees are already in place and is not intended as a military roadmap. Instead, it focuses on how Ukraine can transition from emergency assistance to self-sustaining prosperity.