Ukraine Aims to Sign Deals Worth Over €10 bln at Recovery Forum in Poland

Ukraine expects to sign more than 160 agreements worth more than €10 billion over the next two days during a major recovery conference in the Polish city of Gdańsk, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Thursday.

The EU will transfer the first tranche, consisting of €3.2 billion, of its promised €90 billion loan to Ukraine on Thursday, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said. 

She added that the bloc would start paying out the first slice of €6 billion earmarked for drone production in the coming days.  

The conference is an annual gathering of international leaders, policymakers and business figures dedicated to mobilizing investment for Ukraine’s reconstruction following Russia’s 2022 invasion. 

The project is widely viewed as Europe’s largest infrastructure and economic undertaking since the Marshall Plan, the US-led program that helped rebuild the continent after World War II. 

Ukraine’s reconstruction needs are estimated at hundreds of billions of euros and span virtually every sector of the economy, from energy and transportation to defense manufacturing, industrial production, digitalization and urban redevelopment. 

Von der Leyen said that a promised investment fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine, backed by the EU, France, Germany and Poland, was also “ready to go”, and could mobilize around €500 million this year. 

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Besides Svyrydenko, von der Leyen and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the Ukraine Recovery Conference is expected to bring together a string of heads of state and government including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, Czech premier Andrej Babiš and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. 

The conference focuses on five main topics: business, security and defense, European Union integration, regional development and human capital. 

Tusk opened the conference by saying he chose Gdańsk as the venue because it was where World War Two started, while in the 1980s the city was the cradle of Poland’s pro-democracy Solidarity movement, which helped bring down communism. 

“If we work together wisely and with open hearts, we will overcome all evil and rebuild what evil people are destroying. I believe this deeply, and I wish you the best of luck in these business and political talks,” Tusk told conference attendees. 

‘Invest in Ukraine’ 

Von der Leyen said that since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the European Union and its member states had provided Ukraine with more than €200 billion in economic, financial and military support. 

“And with the Ukraine support loan we will provide a further €90 billion over the next two years.” 

She added that “now is the time to invest in Ukraine,” which earlier this month opened the first cluster of negotiations with the EU on joining the bloc. 

“The determination of the Ukrainian people has shown to the world that their European choice cannot be broken. And now it is our task to turn that choice into a reality,” von der Leyen said. 

One notable absentee at the conference in Gdańsk is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who canceled his attendance amid a bitter diplomatic dispute between Warsaw and Kyiv. 

Nationalist Polish President Karol Nawrocki last week decided to strip Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state decoration.  

The move followed a decision by Zelenskyy to name a Ukrainian military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a World War Two-era nationalist force that Poland holds responsible for the killings of tens of thousands of Poles.