Allies seek investment to rebuild Ukraine at London conference
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Transcript
00:00 More on this, we'll cross now to our UK correspondent, Benedict Paviaux.
00:03 Good morning, Benedict.
00:04 So tell us more about this conference.
00:06 Well, this is about, as the war rages on, as Ukraine starts its counteroffensive against
00:13 this continued Russian invasion and bombing, of course, this is about the push to rebuild.
00:20 So you've got lots of dignitaries.
00:23 What we're seeing there are pictures of a reception at St. James's Palace, in fact,
00:27 last night, and we're seeing the EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, who is about
00:33 in a moment also to address this two-day conference.
00:35 Now, it's a two-day reconstruction conference that is actually jointly hosted.
00:40 Yes, it's in London, but it's jointly hosted by the United Kingdom and Ukraine itself.
00:46 It's expected that after the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president
00:53 who will address the conference virtually, we will also hear, of course, from Prime Minister
00:57 Rishi Sunak, from other dignitaries, and amongst them there are 61 countries that will be represented,
01:03 I understand.
01:05 That's what we've been told here in London, and many at ministerial level, including France
01:10 with its foreign minister, Catherine Colonna.
01:14 And as you were saying, this scale is absolutely huge, because actually the GDP of Ukraine
01:22 was down by 29 percent last year.
01:25 Now, it might surprise many that as the war rages on, the rebuilding, and this conference
01:30 is about rebuilding, but in fact it's rebuilding for the future, but rebuilding already starting
01:36 now, because of course the infrastructure of Ukraine, as we're seeing, has been absolutely
01:41 devastated.
01:42 So, this will be very important.
01:44 Now, it's about the private sector also giving money, and what we've heard very much is there
01:50 are organizations like the World Bank and others who will be there, as I mentioned,
01:55 EU representatives, and the United Kingdom will be pledging, we understand, $3 billion,
02:02 so that's above 2.4 billion pounds worth of World Bank loans to help the rebuilding, even
02:09 as Russia, the war rages on.
02:12 Now, the UK, Benedict, has of course been one of Ukraine's biggest supporters since
02:17 the start of the war.
02:20 It has indeed, because it's been about initially helping military aid, and that is the UK.
02:30 Of course, the biggest donor has been the US by far, but the UK has been both giving
02:35 hardware, whether it's attack drones, also very importantly, and as other countries,
02:41 as France and others have done also, it's about training the military, whether that
02:46 is on land or, as we've seen, this big demand and ask by President Zelensky of wanting F-16
02:53 jets.
02:54 Not every country has F-16 jets.
02:57 The UK has Typhoon, France has Mirage, others have others.
03:01 It's also been about tanks, so it's about training the Ukraine military and helping
03:06 them to win the war, which of course, there's no guarantee that it will.
03:12 One of the other interesting things that we're hearing about is that there's also going to
03:15 be a wartime insurance, a financial assistance, that that's going to be very important to
03:22 help build and give that confidence to the private sector and to companies that it is
03:28 okay to go and work and pledge money and send, of course, staff and personnel to Ukraine.
03:36 So a lot is expected in the next two days.
03:39 It's about this push, push to reconstruction and rebuilding, and what the UK Prime Minister
03:44 has been clear all along, Rishi Sunak, as his predecessors have been since the over
03:50 one year now that the Ukraine war has been raging, is very much that we're there for
03:55 the duration, as long as it takes.
03:58 France 24's Bénédicte Paviot in London.
04:00 Thank you very much, as always.
04:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]