“We keep struggling, but we are strong and now we are stronger than we were in 2022, but of course we have suffered a lot,” said Ukraine’s Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko at a high-level panel on Ukraine as part of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) annual meeting on March 14. “We will stand and defend our country.”

As the country goes into its fourth year of war, Ukraine has proved to be surprisingly resilient and has largely held the larger and more powerful Russian aggressor at bay. Marchenko thanked Ukraine’s allies for their support; Ukraine has been receiving some $40bn a year in external financial backing since the outbreak of hostilities and $39.3bn last year alone, but in its outlook for the next few years, the Finance Ministry is expecting that support to halve by 2026.

“The ongoing support from the coalition is important, as we are going through the most intense period in our history as we hope to reach a fair and just long-term peace agreement for Ukraine,” the minister said. “Ukraine can’t survive without international support, even if there is a ceasefire. The country’s future is about current help as the war has damaged the economy and budget.

When asked if he was worried by the fading support from the US, Marchenko said that the support from Europe is still strong and the relations with the White House have improved recently.

“When one door closes, another one opens,” said Marchenko, referring to the Coalition of the Willing being led by France, the UK, Poland and Germany that travelled to Kyiv last week to show solidarity with Ukraine and demand that Putin implement the 30-day ceasefire first proposed by Trump in March.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves was also on the panel, in another show of solidarity with Ukraine, and repeated promises of on-going support for Ukraine.

“Britain has given Ukraine GBP18bn ($24bn) of support over the last three years and will send GBP3bn a year for as long as it takes,” Reeves told the delegates at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) annual meeting in London on May 14. “In addition the UK was the first to send the first tranche of $3bn a few months ago of the new accelerated cash support that is part of the $50bn international loan backed by Russia's frozen assets. And Ukraine can use that money for anything it likes – including military spending.”

Since the disastrous meeting between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the White House that ended in a shouting match in March, Zelenskiy has worked hard to repair relations, which warmed considerably after Bankova, the presidential administration, signed off on the minerals deal on April 30 that Trump has been pushing for months.

Rebuilding Ukraine

With Zelenskiy and Putin due to meet in Istanbul the next day – although Putin late on May 14 said he would not go and would send a lower-level delegation instead, the possibility of a ceasefire appearing soon hovered over the speakers.

But Marchenko was being pragmatic. Even if the shooting ends, the challenge ahead of rebuilding the country remains enormous and the issue of where the funding will come from remains unresolved. According to the last World Bank estimates, the cost of reconstruction is of the order of $500bn – money that some hope will come from the private sector.

“Ukraine offers huge potential for investors,” Marchenko said. “Now it is underestimated, but in one year’s time our valuations will be much higher.”

There was a lot of talk of war insurance on the panel as one essential prerequisite for business to start investing into Ukraine. The EBRD has already launched its first insurance scheme that covers short-term logistics and transport of goods to facilitate trade. Reeves also said that war insurance is a subject where the banks based in London can help; these are working on more comprehensive schemes, but producing long-term large scale insurance products to cover a potential restart of the war risks remains a work in progress.

And there is plenty to invest into, says Marchenko. Massive investment is needed in infrastructure damaged or destroyed by the war, rail and export channels, and repair to the hundreds of cities and towns bombed during the war. The banking sector has been very resilient and remains profitable, and telecoms and IT have already attracted some investment as the more peaceful parts of the country begin to recover.

The worst damage is ironically all in the east of Ukraine in territory still under Russian occupation that will have to be rebuilt by the Kremlin if it retains control of those regions. According to EBRD estimates, the cost of rebuilding only “free Ukraine” is much less: approximately $200bn, which is a much more affordable figure.

“What is so amazing is that despite the ongoing war, the Ukrainian government is still continuing with the reform work and is making progress,” said the EBRD president Odile Renaud-Basso, who was hosting the meeting at the bank’s annual meeting.

But the private sector will be slow to arrive, due to the persistent war risks and the unfinished reform agenda. In the meantime, development banks like the EBRD will play a significant role in the early stages of the reconstruction of the economy and are increasingly cooperating to coordinate their aid and investment programmes, says Renaud-Basso.

“We are setting up a single platform for the multilateral development banks (MDBs) so that we can organise bilateral funding and don't replicate each other's work,” says Renaud-Basso. The international donors like the UK and Ireland are also plugging into these platforms with their assistance projects. “This should open up more investment opportunities over time,” Renaud-Basso adds.

At the end of the discussion the panellists were asked what they would like to see happening in the coming year and of course they all said they hoped for a just and fair ceasefire. However, Marchenko, who is trying to run an economy in wartime, was once more dour and realistic as the prospects of doing a meaningful deal with Putin remain remote.

“To prepare for peace, you have to get ready for war. We have to plan,” said Marchenko. “You may call me a cynic, but actually I’m just a Finance Minister.”