Ukraine war: 'Marshall Plan' for Kyiv, Russian 'spies' in Norway, US mulls sending new air defences
Ukraine's president asked the international community on Tuesday for more financial support to help plug a €38 billion budget deficit, caused by the Russian invasion.
Via video link, Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged politicians and experts gathered in Berlin for an international conference on Ukraine's reconstruction to "take a decision" and fill the country's 2023 budget deficit.
"It's a very large sum of 38 billion dollars," he said, adding this was for "the salaries of teachers, doctors, it's social benefits, pensions."
At the opening of the meeting, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said reconstruction should "start now", believing "a new Marshall Plan for the 21st century" was needed.
The Marshall Plan was a massive, US-funded spending project that helped rebuild Europe after the devastation of World War Two.
Rebuilding Ukraine is "a challenge for generations", Scholz continued, adding it would also be an opportunity to modernise the country's "roads, bridges, hospitals, and means of transport".
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was at the conference, calling the destruction in Ukraine "astonishing".
“The World Bank estimates the cost of the damage at €350 billion ... That is certainly more than any one country or union can provide alone. We need everyone on deck".
Zelenskyy added that money was urgently needed to help Ukraine "get through the winter and save people from a humanitarian catastrophe."
This would "save the European continent (...) from a migratory tsunami", he added.
Millions of Ukrainians have fled their country since the war began in February, filling westwards and to Russia and Belarus in the east.
2. US mulls air defences for Ukraine
The United States is considering sending older HAWK
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