KYIV: About 70 countries and institutions pledged more than $1 billion in new aid to Ukraine to repair the infrastructure that Russia has relentlessly battered with airstrikes in recent weeks, cutting power and water supplies for millions of Ukrainians during the winter months.
After global officials met in Paris, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said the money came from “new commitments. … It is aid, or gifts in kind. It is not loans.”
She said the assistance would be “rolled out in the next days and during the months of winter which will help strengthen the resilience of civilian infrastructure.”
About $400 million would be aimed at helping Ukraine’s energy sector, which Russia has repeatedly targeted with waves of airstrikes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the aid meeting via video link that his country needed at least $840 million.
“It’s a lot, but the price is less than the cost of blackout,” Zelenskyy said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Russia is trying to “plunge the Ukrainian people into despair,” and that the goal of the conference was to help the Ukrainian people “get through this winter.
Later, Colonna told a news conference, “We cannot leave them [Ukrainians] alone faced with winter, faced with their aggressor, which is seeking to inflict difficulties on them.”
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told reporters that the new aid “is a very powerful signal. It shows that the whole of the civilized world is supporting Ukraine.”
(VOA)
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