Ukraine: Will Russia or the West pay to rebuild?
The West wants to make Russia pay for mutilating Ukraine, said Paola Tamma in Politico (Belgium). Ukraine has taken quite a beating since Russia invaded in late February. The Kyiv School of Economics estimated the physical damage at $100 billion, and the damage to the economy will be many times that. President Volodymyr Zelensky has asked Western leaders for proceeds from seized Russian assets, and last week, four EU countries—the three Baltic states plus Slovakia—told Brussels to get started. They have proposed selling confiscated Russian state assets, plus the yachts and mansions seized from sanctioned oligarchs, to fund the reconstruction. Failing that, they want to hold the properties “as leverage” to force Moscow to pay reparations. This won’t cover the entire bill—which experts believe could vault into the trillions—but it’s a start, said Anders Aslund in the Kyiv Post (Ukraine). Of course, “the Kremlin is not likely to accept that voluntarily,” but Western countries have already frozen $316 billion in Russian central bank assets and $50 billion in oligarch wealth. A U.S.-EU version of the Marshall Plan, the program that rebuilt Western Europe after World War II, could supplement the Russian money.
This all makes for “rousing political rhetoric,” said Gillian Tett in the Financial Times (U.K.), but corporate and financial elites want no part of seizing private assets without “due process.” Such piracy, they fear, could destroy trust in global markets and open governments up to “years of costly lawsuits.” Russia’s Security Council veto, meanwhile, takes any U.N.-brokered solution off the table. European leaders will likely lean heavily on the United States, which has “extensive civil tort laws” that could allow Ukraine to claim damages from the U.S.-based assets of Russian oligarchs. For now, selling off frozen Russian assets is “simply not possible” in most European countries, said Marek Hudema in Lidové Noviny (Czech Republic). Canada is crafting legislation allowing it to redistribute seized Russian assets, and it wants its G-7 allies to follow suit. But our laws rightly protect the private property of foreigners, and even if Ukraine were to claim damages from Russians accused of war crimes, those atrocities must first “be confirmed by an independent court.”
Zelensky, though, is confident that billions in Western money is coming, said Anna Zafesova in La Stampa (Italy). He has proposed “a kind of game” in which “any foreign country, city, or company will be able to ‘adopt’ a Ukrainian region or industrial sector.” Will investors jump at the opportunity to repair burnt fields and rebuild “incinerated schools and hospitals”? Don’t underestimate Zelensky’s skill as a salesman: He wasn’t just an actor, remember, but also a successful entrepreneur, as “the films and series created by his production company were box-office hits, even in Russia.” The U.K. is already rumored to be sponsoring the reconstruction of Kyiv, but there will be “rich investment opportunities for everyone.” Zelensky’s message is that a Ukrainian Marshall Plan could become an economic “propulsion engine”—and “those who arrive first get the best pickings.”