Ukraine Needs $750 Billion To Rebuild. Don’t Worry, U.S. Taxpayers Will Pay.

One of my favorite T-shirts was worn by a television producer who worked on location filming commercials. Anyone who has been on a live TV shoot knows it can be one disaster after another. Cameras break, lights fail, teleprompters don’t work, the weather deteriorates, and so on. Stuff happens.

Pros know this and just rise to the occasion. The T-shirt said, “Act like nothing’s wrong.” That captures the kind of sang-froid it takes to work effectively under pressure.

That T-shirt was the first thing I thought of when I read this article. It reports that the Prime Minister of Ukraine has calmly asked an international conference for $750 billion of assistance to rebuild Ukraine after the war.

Nice try. There are a few problems with this. First of all, there will be no Ukraine to rebuild, at least not in its current form. Russia will take somewhere between 1/3 and half the country and keep it. The parts that Russia is taking control of include the industrial nexus, the largest natural resource deposits, and the most fertile land.

Russia will be able to finance the reconstruction of their conquests using the very industrial capacity, mining, and agricultural output they have captured. Russia will also control the ports and major rivers and will be able to tax the remainder of Ukraine for access. The gradual result will be a prosperous part of Ukraine controlled by Russia and a desperately poor part of Ukraine left to the corrupt oligarchs under Zelensky.

When asked how Ukraine will finance the $750 billion demanded, the Prime Minister said they could use assets seized from Russian oligarchs. That’s ridiculous. There may be $5 billion or $10 billion in yachts and townhouses, but nothing close to $750 billion.

The truth is that this money will be expected to come from the U.S. and EU either directly or indirectly through the World Bank and IMF. In other words, you are going to pay for it.

Of course, it’s unlikely much reconstruction will get done because Ukraine has long been a money-laundering operation for the benefit of U.S. Democrats including the Clintons, Bidens, and Obamas. That’s something to bear in mind when your taxes start going up to “help” Ukraine.

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