Ukraine estimates cost of reconstruction at $750 bn
Ukraine told an international conference Monday that it will cost an estimated $750 billion to rebuild the war-shattered country, a task President Volodymyr Zelensky said was the shared duty of the democratic world.
Speaking at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Switzerland, the Ukrainian president and a long line of government ministers described the massive destruction and towering needs since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24.
"Reconstruction of Ukraine is not a local task of a single nation," Zelensky said via video message.
"It is a common task of the whole democratic world," he said, insisting that "reconstruction of Ukraine is the biggest contribution to the support of global peace".
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told the conference that the recovery "is already estimated at $750 billion".
"We believe that the key source of recovery should be the confiscated assets of Russia and Russian oligarchs," he said, stressing that "the Russian authorities unleashed this bloody war. They caused this massive destruction, and they should be held accountable for it".
The two-day conference, held under tight security in the picturesque southern Swiss city of Lugano, had been planned well before the invasion, and had originally been slated to discuss reforms in Ukraine before being repurposed to focus on reconstruction.
