Ukraine left the two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdańsk, Poland, with some 200 agreements worth over €10bn, Ukrainian Economy, Environment and Agriculture Minister Oleksiy Sobolev said after the June 25-26 meeting.

The package included the launch of the first €3.2bn tranche of a wider €90bn EU loan for Kyiv, financing linked to the World Bank, a $300mn US Exim Bank facility for Naftogaz and a $5mn Google investment in the Ukrainian state app Obrii.

Poland’s state-owned development bank BGK joined the EU’s European flagship fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine, committing €15mn. The fund raised about €260mn in its first round from development institutions in Poland, Germany, Italy and France as well as the European Investment Bank, with a target of €500mn this year.

State-owned companies PGE, Orlen, Enea and Tauron signed a letter of intent on rebuilding Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, while Orlen also expanded cooperation with Naftogaz on LNG and decarbonisation.

Business, security and defence, EU integration, regional development and human capital formed the conference’s five pillars, with security and defence added as a new Polish-backed component. 

The conference was overshadowed by a sharp deterioration of Polish–Ukrainian relations in the wake of the latest dispute over historical memory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy skipped the event in effect, sending Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko instead.

The dispute with Poland could make Ukraine’s path to membership in the EU a rough and long ride just as Kyiv had gained a favourable military and financial momentum over Russia with long-range air strikes, analysts say.

Business-wise, many of the signed documents were letters of intent or large public-sector financing packages rather than private contracts. The latter were relatively few and far between, and among those that did materialise, Polish companies played only second fiddle.

A business package announced just before the conference by Lviv, Ukraine’s sixth biggest city, involved US, British and Dutch partners, but not, much to Poland’s chagrin, any Polish ones.