Putin Should Foot The Bill For Ukraine's Reconstruction As Russia Strives To Outlast In War Of Attrition, Says Larry Summers

The war between Ukraine and Russia has gone on for nearly a year and a half now, and there is no resolution in sight. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers on Thursday discussed the war and what it would take to bring normalcy back in Ukraine.

What Happened: The U.S., European countries and their allies should launch a counteroffensive of their own against the Russian aggression, said Summers in an op-ed published by Foreign Affairs on Thursday.

The counteroffensive should be non-violent and "centered on economic and political reconstruction," Summers said in the article, which was also co-authored by Philip Zelikow and Robert B. Zoellick. Doing so, according to the authors, would secure a lasting Ukrainian victory.

Russia's military strategy is to ruin Ukraine and outlast the latter in a war of attrition, they said. The authors noted that Ukraine's GDP fell by 29% in 2022, inflation is running high at 27%, the country’s private sector is fundamentally damaged and more than 13 million Ukrainians have been displaced.

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Recovery Plan: The World Bank estimates that Ukraine would need about $14 billion in grants this year to meet its most urgent reconstruction needs, the authors said. Over the next decade, recovery and reconstruction would cost more than $400 billion, they said, adding that this figure does not include the cost of rebuilding in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia.

The authors also called for an ambitious recovery plan following the war’s end, along the lines of the Marshall Plan, which aimed to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe.

“That would be a real triumph over Russia's effort to plunge Europe back into a darker age,” the authors said.

The authors recommended that Western nations use frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine's reconstruction. The frozen Russian state financial assets total about $300 billion, they estimated.

“But one way, or another Russian President Vladimir Putin's government, not Western taxpayers, should bear most of the costs,” they said.

“A new European recovery program centered on Ukraine and funded by Russian assets is not only a key to winning the peace; it is a key to winning the war and countering Moscow's strategy of attrition and ruin,” they added.

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Photo: World Economic Forum via Wikimedia Commons