Ukraine’s Corporate Carve-Up Collapses? By Kit Klarenberg

After Ukraine won its war with Russia, the vultures we’re going to swoop in on Ukraine’s resources and get in on the ground floor of Ukrainian reconstruction efforts. One thing went wrong with the plan. From Kit Klarenberg at kitklarenberg.com:

On July 5th, Bloomberg reported that a BlackRock-administered multibillion-dollar fund for Kiev’s reconstruction, due to be unveiled at a dedicated Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome July 10th/11th, had been placed on hold at the start of 2025 “due to a lack of interest” among institutional, private, and state financiers. The summit is over, lack of investor enthusiasm persists, and “the project’s future is now uncertain.” It’s just the latest confirmation the West’s long-running mission to carve up Ukraine for profit verges on total disintegration.

BlackRock’s Ukraine Development Fund has been in the works since May 2023. It was originally envisaged as one of the most ambitious public-private finance collaborations in history, which would rival Washington’s Marshall Plan that rebuilt – and heavily indebted – Western Europe in World War II’s wake. With vast returns promised, initially investors were reportedly “ready to plow funds” into the endeavour, due to widespread optimism Kiev’s much-hyped “counteroffensive” later that year “might end the war quickly.”

In the event, the counteroffensive was an unmitigated disaster. Ukraine suffered up to 100,000 casualties, with much of its arsenal of Western-supplied armour, vehicles and weapons obliterated, in return for recapturing just 0.25% of the territory occupied by Russia in the proxy war’s initial phases. As BlackRock vice chair Philipp Hildebrand explained, the results killed off investor exuberance, as they required “the cessation of hostilities, or at the very least a perspective for peace.” Concerns about Ukraine’s ever-reducing skilled workforce were also widespread.

Fast forward to today, and there is no indication of any peace deal on the horizon, Russia is rapidly advancing across multiple fronts, and the Ukrainian government estimates the country has lost around 40% of its working-age population due to the proxy war. No wonder BlackRock’s Development Fund has failed to attract a single dollar. Quite what will remain of Ukraine when the conflict is over, and whether any financial returns can be gleaned from its ruins, are open, grave questions.

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