Ukraine’s allies sign accord to help rebuild

More than 40 countries, including the United States, Japan and Europe’s biggest economies, signed an agreement Tuesday aimed at raising hundreds of billions of dollars needed to rebuild war-battered Ukraine.

The accord, called the Lugano Declaration, after the lakeside Swiss town where it was hammered out, sets out principles for providing aid to Ukraine and for the country’s eventual reconstruction, as well as sweeping political changes that Ukraine will need to make to curb pervasive graft.

The Lugano Declaration is only “the first step of a long journey,” President Ignazio Cassis, of Switzerland, told a news conference.

With cities flattened and schools, hospitals, bridges and railways destroyed by bombs, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, of Ukraine, told participants that the cost for reconstruction already stood at more than $750 billion. But with Russian forces still pummeling eastern Ukraine, he added that the estimate was only provisional.

Shmyhal argued that the assets of Russian oligarchs seized by Western governments since Russia’s invasion should be used for Ukraine’s recovery. Those assets are thought to be worth between $300 billion and $500 billion.

“The aggressor has to pay for the destruction,” he said.

Participants in the conference agreed to support a recovery plan for Ukraine but said it needed to be matched by political and economic changes, along with better transparency.

Cassis said the commitments of support “should give the people in Ukraine hope and the certainty that they are not alone.”