Dreams of home
Ukrainian refugees need Marshall Plan
AKRAKOW, POLAND — n abandoned mall in eastern Krakow holds a community in exile. Cots and plastic bags filled with clothes sit in spacious rooms that once housed stores selling luxury goods. A dozen women rest on their cots and stare into space, while their children roam the Galeria Plaza, a glass and brick labyrinth of discarded opulence.
The 500 Ukrainian refugees in this deserted mall — all women and children — are waiting to go home. But Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine has turned many of their homes to rubble and their cities into charred ruins. Even those with undamaged homes would face grinding poverty and a national economy in shambles if they returned to Ukraine.
From inside this forsaken mall, the moral and political imperatives of the war seem clear: The countries that are helping Ukrainians stand off one of the world’s mightiest militaries must also help them rebuild. Until then, Europe’s sheltering and care of Ukraine’s 6.5 million refugees — admirable as it is — will be mostly palliative, essential but temporary.
Poland has been especially generous. Krakow has received up to 250,000 Ukrainian refugees. A month after Russia invaded Ukraine, refugees swelled Krakow’s population of nearly 800,000 to more than 1 million. Nationwide, Poland has accommodated 3.5 million refugees, more than half of Ukraine’s refugee population.
“It’s an enormous strain on our resources, but we do what we can,” Lukasz Wantuch, a Krakow city councilman, told me Tuesday.
After the invasion on Feb. 24, Krakow quickly repurposed the deserted Galeria Plaza mall: On one end is a shelter; on the other, a distribution and storage center for food, fuel and other products. Refugees in Galeria Plaza receive three meals a day and basic health care. Mr. Wantuch calls them the “poorest of the poor.” They have no jobs or money and can speak only Ukrainian.
Government officials have encouraged the families to move to other countries, Mr. Wantuch said, such as Germany or Spain, where jobs, housing or sponsors await them. But most want to stay and wait out the war in Krakow, the closest major city to the Ukrainian border. The Russian invasion has fueled a fervent nationalism, even as it has crushed the national economy.
“I could go to Germany, England or even the United States, but I want to stay and help rebuild my country,” said Zhenia Myronenko, 35, who sought shelter
at Galeria Plaza two months ago. Ms. Myronenko, a former television production assistant, lost her job in Kyiv on March 20. She traveled to Lviv, but the war and refugee crisis made housing unaffordable. Now, she and volunteer Alex Ruznic, 43, a native of Bosnia, organize educational and recreational activities for children in the shelter.
Before the war, Ms. Myronenko produced a podcast to counter Russian propaganda that Ukraine was a second-class country. “Russians want to kill our culture and make us weak,” she
said, “but our people will fight to the end.”
Marshall plan for Ukraine
The Russian siege has inflicted at least $100 billion of direct damage to Ukraine’s buildings, roads, factories and other infrastructure, and even more harm to the national economy. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has estimated rebuilding Ukraine would cost $600 billion.
With the war ongoing, rebuilding costs are, at best, estimates, but they will certainly amount to
more than Ukraine can bear alone. Reconstructing Ukraine will require an effort similar in purpose and scope to the U.S.-led Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe following World War II.
Such a task, involving billions of dollars, would pose daunting practical problems — and an enormous potential for waste and graft. To ensure transparency and accountability, an autonomous agency, answering only to the donor nations, should administer the aid. With advice from experts in urban planning, green energy and transportation, and advanced manufacturing technology, a national reconstruction would enable Ukraine to leapfrog a generation of growth in technology and economic development.
Ultimately, a rebuilt Ukraine would strengthen the European Union, promote political stability in the region, further isolate Russia economically and ensure access to Ukraine’s products and markets, including food commodities from its dominant agricultural sector. Most important, it would solve the crisis of 6.5 million people who left Ukraine as refugees, and another eight million people who were uprooted from their homes.
For Zhenia Myronenko and the women and children who wait in Galeria Plaza, as well as millions more like them in Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia and elsewhere, a rebuilt Ukraine would mean a country, home and future they could return to and reclaim.