Ukraine needs at least Ksh.800 billion a month until the summer to keep its economy afloat amid the economic losses inflicted by Russia.
Addressing an International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank conference via video link from Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the money will go towards rebuilding the country after the Russian devastation.
“We will need hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild all this later”. “The Russian military is aimed at destroying all objects in Ukraine that can serve as an economic base for life. That includes railroad stations, food warehouses, oil refineries,” Zelensky said.
The World Bank has estimated that about Ksh.6.9 trillion of physical damage has so far been inflicted on Ukraine.
Zelensky also said the global community needed to exclude Russia immediately from international financial institutions, including the World Bank, IMF and others.
All countries “must immediately be prepared to break up all relations with Russia,” he added.
Ukraine has called for more weapons, saying that the country still does not have enough, despite billions in Western military aid that has forced Russia to re-focus its offensive away from Kyiv and towards the east.
He said the West should ramp up pressure on Moscow, imposing more financial pain and cutting off relations with Vladimir Putin’s government.
The IMF has warned of economic devastation both in Ukraine and abroad from the war.
The conflict will cause the country’s economy to collapse 35 percent this year, the IMF said this week, while Russia’s will drop 8.5 percent.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who attended the conference in person, said the country’s economic output could decline by as much as 50 percent, with direct and indirect losses so far totalling Ksh.64.7 trillion.
That figure is more than three times the size of Ukraine’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which stood at Ksh.17.9 trillion in 2020, according to the World Bank.
