EU’s leaders believe there will be anger among people due to the money needed to “rebuild” Ukraine, US media reports.
The dissatisfaction of the European people with the EU’s policy of aid to Ukraine seems clear. One of the current biggest discussions among European bureaucrats is how to raise enough money to “rebuild Ukraine”. According to a US media outlet, politicians are concerned that a large-scale fundraising campaign could generate anger among citizens and inspire new mass protests, considering that many people have already shown that they are not pleased with the financial aid provided so far. However, the bloc seems resolute in continuing to send money to Kiev, regardless of what the population thinks about it.
On November 3, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, presented data concerning European financial support to Ukraine. So far, more than 22 billion euros have been provided by Brussels to Kiev, making the current funding campaign one of the most expensive in Western history. Borrell also emphasized that this amount concerns only what was given to Ukraine by the bloc itself, not including the various packages of military aid, whose values are still uncertain, since military partnerships are made bilaterally between the member states and the Ukrainian government, without EU’s involvement.
Faced with so much waste of money by authorities to defend a neo-Nazi and dictatorial regime abroad, it was expected that European citizens would revolt against the bloc’s bureaucracy, as has been happening for months, with a wave of protests affecting the main cities of the continent. With the high prices of energy, fuel and food, the proximity of winter becomes an existential threat to many European citizens, who demand an immediate end to support for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, despite the Western media trying to minimize or even ignore the existence of such protests.
However, even in the face of the evident worsening of the people’s living conditions and the strong popular unrest, the EU’s attitude has been very clear in showing resoluteness about the decision to provide every possible form of support to the NATO proxy. In addition to what has already been done, the Union plans to create a new project, focused not on assisting Kiev in the conflict, but on “rebuilding” Ukraine. Such a “rebuilding” plan would require an even greater amount of money than what has been sent to Kiev so far, which worries European leaders about possible negative popular responses.
In a recent article published on German media, Olaf Scholz and Ursula von der Leyen made some considerations about the Ukrainian reconstruction and affirmed that the bloc would have been able to mobilize a fundraising of 35 billion euros so far. Although greater than the previous aid packages, this figure represents only 10% of the 350 billion that Von der Leyen believes is needed for “rebuilding”, as she suggested considering the World Bank’s calculations of the average cost of damage generated by the conflict.
It is important to emphasize that there are estimates of even higher values. For example, Ukrainian economist Yuriy Gorodnichenko, who is a professor at the University of California, claims that the cost of reconstruction could reach the mark of 1 trillion dollars. In the same sense, but in a more “optimistic” result, the Kiev School of Economics pointed to a cost of 600 billion dollars – a value that may be updated, since the School studied the conflict scenario until late May.
In other words, Western leaders want to give to Kiev amounts that they simply cannot afford – at least not without letting the European population go cold and starve. Pro-Kiev propaganda has been more and more discredited by the European people, who increasingly see the conflict as something that does not concern them and in which the EU should not intervene. Some analysts believe that the liberal leaders themselves are aware of the anti-strategic and anti-popular aspect of the strategy they adopted on Ukraine, which is why such authorities have not yet elaborated concrete proposals to collect the estimated values.
In fact, in the article, Scholz and Von der Leyen ask a series of questions about the best path to follow – and seem to have no answer yet:
“What can we – together with our Ukrainian partners – learn from past reconstruction experiences? How can such a huge long-term project be organized and financed? Which structures are important in order to ensure the necessary transparency and the indispensable trust of investors?”
According to Bradley Devlin, columnist for The American Conservative, the reason for the lack of response is the simple fact that European leaders know that any measure taken to raise hundreds of billions in aid to Ukraine will be met with dissatisfaction and unpopularity by the people, who correctly prioritize their own material interests over the reconstruction of foreign nations.
“Again, these world leaders know this, but refuse to say it for fear that citizens of various European nations would decide that Ukraine’s democracy simply isn’t worth forking over hundreds of billions of their hard-earned money, much less going without heat or other necessities this winter. They refuse to say it because they know the people are right”, he says.
In fact, there is only one way to effectively help Ukraine and contribute to its restoration: stop assistance to the current regime, allow the conflict to end as quickly as possible, and establish future cooperation agreements with Russia to work together in allowing Ukraine to return to normality, without further political interventionism.
Written by Lucas Leiroz, researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.