00:00 For more on this story, I'm joined now by our International Affairs Editor, Philip Turrell.
00:04 Philip, then we heard Zelensky there hoping for support at this conference in London.
00:11 What kind of support are we talking about exactly?
00:13 Well, there's already been a development, Angela, this morning on a couple of fronts.
00:16 The first one is that there are over 1,000 foreign dignitaries from 61 states taking
00:23 part in this meeting in London.
00:26 That is including non-governmental organisations and also business leaders and entrepreneurs.
00:30 In the last few minutes, we've heard that 400 businesses from 38 countries have already
00:36 agreed to sign up to what is called the Ukraine Business Compact, which is to help Ukraine
00:42 rebuild the country, basically.
00:44 And there's been a new framework agreed for war risk insurance as far as investing in
00:49 Ukraine is concerned.
00:50 That is an important move because it will overwrite the costs involved in investing
00:55 in Ukraine if there is an insurance to cover those costs in case of trouble.
01:00 So those are two of the announcements that have come out of this conference so far this
01:04 morning.
01:05 As you said earlier on, Britain has already agreed to donate $3 billion worth of additional
01:12 guarantees to unlock funding from the World Bank.
01:14 So it's all moving in the right direction.
01:17 This is the sixth gathering of the Ukraine Rebuilding Conference.
01:22 It started back in 2017, long before the war started.
01:25 There was no addition in 2020, but this is the sixth or one this time round.
01:31 So it's encouraging private sector investment, boosting Ukraine's own transformation and
01:35 reform programme and encouraging support by the international community.
01:39 That's the bottom line about what is going on here.
01:41 The cost involved in this is absolutely colossal.
01:45 There is a figure which is being released by the World Bank saying that the total cost
01:50 of the war over the first year alone between February 2022 and February 2023 was $411 billion
02:01 and an eye-watering figure of a trillion dollars, which is what many economists are saying the
02:08 overall cost of the war could be at the end of the day.
02:10 Well, it's difficult to know how even to work out such an eye-watering sum when you see
02:15 the devastation in places like Mariupol and also in Bakhmut, but that underlines the necessity
02:22 of these investors to come into the country to help it be rebuilt.
02:26 Now, you said there's a massive amount of money that's needed to try to rebuild Ukraine
02:32 and that there will be promises.
02:35 Will they be honoured afterwards?
02:36 Well, that's the big question.
02:38 Of course, all this hinges on when the war is going to end because there's no point investing
02:41 large sums of money, vast amounts, into a country that is at war.
02:46 And for the moment, that counteroffensive, as you were saying earlier on, is moving forward,
02:51 but very slowly.
02:52 There's not really been any progress in the last few hours as far as Ukraine's advances
02:58 are concerned.
02:59 There's many worries about the fact that they won't be able to break through these lines
03:04 that Russia has set up.
03:06 So it all depends on how fast the war is over, whether there's going to be some kind of peace
03:11 agreement and then the rebuilding can start.
03:13 But it's going to concern many different sectors, starting with the IT sector, because there
03:18 have been a lot of people involved in the war who are now experts in war IT, so they
03:24 could be used to use their knowledge in other countries around the world.
03:28 There'll be a big boost to transform Ukraine into green energy, to move it away from using
03:32 coal, particularly for electricity generating.
03:34 A big clampdown on the corruption rate in Ukraine.
03:40 Ukraine has said it's going to do its utmost to try to stamp out as much corruption as
03:43 possible.
03:44 And of course, another important aspect of this conference is, well, how much money is
03:51 going to be coming from Russia?
03:52 How much is Russia going to contribute?
03:55 Obviously, Russia will refuse to contribute anything, but there are means to obtain Russian
03:59 money, assets which have been frozen since the world financial crisis of 2008.
04:05 And Britain has said it could hand over a billion pounds worth of Russian money in frozen
04:10 assets in oligarchs' homes in central London, some of these plum addresses that they own
04:15 that have been frozen.
04:16 They could be sold off and that money used to help bail out Ukraine.
04:19 So all of these are being discussed at this conference.
04:23 So quite a lot on the agenda over the next couple of days.
04:26 We'll have to see exactly what they work out.
04:27 But the big question is, even if they do reach agreements, how soon these agreements are
04:31 going to be implemented.
04:32 Okay.
04:33 Well, thanks very much for that.
04:34 Philip Turdor, our International Affairs Editor.
