Peace in Ukraine will depend on one crucial thing

The real gain in foreign commercial opportunities will be through investment in a revitalised nation, where reconstruction has delivered a broad-based and unifying peace dividend that will resolve many of the country’s pre-war challenges, writes Fergus Drake

No less a prize than Europe’s ongoing prosperity and security depend on it

(AFP via Getty Images)

All wars end in negotiations, as India’s former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru once said. But a large part of those negotiations, in modern war at least, lies in securing a pathway to reconstruction and recovery.

Even as Ukraine continues to live through trench warfare and constant bombardment in Russia’s year-long invasion, negotiations have begun to secure the country’s restoration. Yet it is vital that the necessary factors for success are hardwired into this emerging reconstruction plan.

Certainly, the cost of emergency relief and the restoration of basic services is set to be huge. In early December last year, the World Bank costed the damage caused by the Russian invasion since February 2022 at $525bn to $630bn, and damage has only accumulated since then. The list of destruction is immense: 25,000 kms of roads, 320 bridges, 800 hospitals and hundreds of thousands of homes have to be rebuilt.