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These podcasts are recordings from the Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice lecture series 2023/24, 2022/23, 2021/22 and 2020/21, a visiting lecture series coordinated by Professor of Development Studies, Professor James Putzel and Dr Laura Mann.
The Cutting Edge series provides students and guests with fascinating insights into the practical world of international development. Renowned guest lecturers share their expertise and invite discussion on an exciting range of issues, from climate change policy, to pressing humanitarian crises. In 2020, the series took place online, enabling us to host fantastic speakers from around the world and to stream the lectures on YouTube, opening them up to a global audience. Now we are back in person but still recording the sessions to share with our global audience.
SPEAKER 6
Welcome, everybody. I'm glad you could make it today. We're very lucky to have four really important speakers here. And I want to start off first by introducing. And they have to be brief, I mean, everyone I could speak 20 minutes about Dr. Julia Yurchenko third one in who who is a an academic from Greenwich University and a senior lecturer and researcher in the political in political economy at the Political Economy, governance, Finance and Accountability Institute. Her research focuses on state society, capital complexes, transnational class formation, and the political economy of Ukraine in the post-Soviet peace. I was delighted when trying to organise this activity to find Julia. She has written a brilliant book called Ukraine and the Empire of Capital From Marketisation to Armed Conflict. And so I really urge you to have a look at that book. I mean, it's a one of the best interpretations I've seen of what's happened to Ukraine since the Break-Up of the USSR. And it takes it, you know, the, the, the analysis right from that time and its historical antecedents right up to 2018. So after this conflict, this war really began in the mid in 20 1415. Secondly, my old friend and colleague, Dr. Anna medieval Anna, is a senior research fellow, visiting research fellow at the Russia Institute at King's College London. Her research focuses on trajectories of violence and post-Soviet conflicts and the challenges to liberal peace. She's written extensively on the issues of conflict and peace in Ukraine, and is author of Through Times of Trouble Conflict in Southeastern Ukraine, explained From Within. You'll find links to their biographies and further publications. Anna has done primary research in the Donbass, and I'm sure she'll refer to some of the insights that she has taken from that experience. A third, I want to introduce Professor David Luke, who's professor of practice at our own department, international Development, and he's strategic director. I stress strategic director of the Firoz Logy Institute for Africa at the LSC. Professor Luke has decades of experience in policy advisory services, managing and catalysing research, building partnerships, training and capacity development for private sector and government. He's published a lot and recently on trade issues to do with Africa, and I think he'll be able to comment on how the conflict Russia, Ukraine is having reverberations across sub-Saharan Africa and the developing world. And last but not least, I'd like to introduce sir Mark Lowcock. Sir Mark, I guess we have to call you. He's visiting professor of practice in the in our own international development department here at the LSC. And he's a senior fellow at the centre for Global Development. Mark has sir. Mark has a very long career in it. I think we first met along years ago, and from 2011 to 2017, he was the permanent secretary of the UK Department for International Development. That makes you one of the near last committee secretaries before that department was was debunked. He's now working. I mean, he's written all sorts of interesting things. Google him. He has a long experience interacting with issues of international conflict and international development. He's right now involved in writing a history of DfID. I even heard him interviewing Clare Short just before the talk began, so we couldn't have for more thought in authoritative. Figures to to engage in the discussion tonight. And we're going to do this a little bit in a little bit unusual way. Usually you have a panel and you say, okay, each person has ten minutes to speak. So I made all the speakers very nervous to say, no, I'm not going to do that. Instead, I want to ask questions and we're going to try to get through our agenda as much as we can. We have to not move these mics much, but talk into them for the recording. So we'll try to get through our agenda as much as we can, but I really want to make sure that we have a good period of time for Q&A, because that's that's such an important part of our activity here on Friday afternoons. So I'll make sure that's at least 45 minutes for the Q&A. So to kick off this, to kick off this discussion, I thought, we really can't talk about the global impact of the war, etcetera, without having some idea of where it's at. What what what's happening in this war. And again, a war of asymmetric power in, in, in Russia and Ukraine. And what is sort of trajectories, what trajectories exist for reaching any sort of peace? Now, we could spend the whole evening trying to answer this question, but instead I'm going to ask the speakers to address this in a fairly succinct way, and we can follow up. And the questions for sure. But can I start with Yuliya?
SPEAKER 7
Thank you. I hope you can hear me. Okay. There at the back. Well, it's difficult to obviously address all the aspects of the state of this war at this point, but I'll try to speak to some main, major ones as I see them. And and then during the Q&A, I suppose we can pick up whatever I don't answer or other speakers don't speak to at this point. I think a lot the way that I see it, both domestically in Ukraine, amongst politicians specifically and internationally, there is there is almost an acceptance that this will be a very long war. Civilians do not like to talk about it as much as politicians do, but realistically speaking, it doesn't look as promising as we would like it to be. The war is over a year and a half in. The resources on each side are draining, armies are exhausted, but there seems to be no no end in sight. The genocide that is now ongoing in Gaza, and the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Palestine has also been used as a as a distraction by Russia to start escalation on the south eastern front. And the confrontations are on the front lines are really gruelling. The armies, the armies are quite exhausted and the the count of victims is extremely high. Ukraine doesn't publish its military losses for strategic reasons. So we are looking at a long war. How long? We do not know. It's also hybrid warfare and I'm happy to speak to some aspects of that later during the Q&A. The economy is extremely right now dependent on foreign aid and loans. It was already one of the most indebted countries when the war started, and I documented in my work widely. If anybody wants to look at how that happened, that means that whatever budgetary even goings are happening in the country, they are going towards the military expenditure and then through foreign aid primarily, and other forms of financing, external forms of financing, public spending is being paid out. That, of course, creates excessive excesses of dependencies for the country. And that also comes with very serious fiscal restrictions, not least because of loans, conditionalities. Many of which are quite old and I don't want to focus on them too much. But sovereignty of decision making in the country is compromised. Finance. The budgetary ability to support the population is extremely compromised. It is also, since the Second World War, the biggest displacement of people in Europe. There are millions. We do not know exact numbers because people keep moving back and forth between European EU countries in Ukraine. But there are millions who are registered as displaced and refugees in Europe. There are millions who are displaced within Ukraine. There are serious problems with housing, jobs for the ability of various basic goods and needs problems in the army, but specifically amongst the civilian population, increased impoverishment and feminisation of poverty happening in Ukraine. There are many plans for in and after world rebuilding, many of which were discussed last year, this year here in London at the Ukrainian Recovery Conference. But even according to the current plans, there will be a need for $411 billion for the rebuilding. That was estimation of the spring 2023. It will be significantly higher and there is already projected 4.5 million shortage of workforce for that rebuilding. And and the longer the war drags, the fewer people are indicating in their surveys amongst refugees that they are willing to come back. So no matter how great a plan you have and how many commitments you have for the rebuilding, if people don't come back, all the plans are dead in the water, and that is a prime. That is a major source of concern for me. And I'm engaged in a number of research projects that are to try to kind of see what what would make people. Who want to come back. And that experience also speaks to other conflict ridden places and other disaster ridden places. How do you rebuild from rubble? How do you make places liveable? How do you build future out of genocide and destruction? Because what we see in Ukraine now, it's a it's a widely documented genocide. And indeed, Russian authorities themselves are very good at producing evidence of conducting genocide in Ukraine. So yeah. So it's quite so. So the situation is quite is quite dire. It's quite dangerous. And now, of course, with the escalation in the in between Israel and Palestine, we see that the, the attention and the attention of different institutions, international and politicians and international community are being torn between these, these two conflicts. But of course, there are so many more around the world that require our attention.
SPEAKER 6
Thank you and you'll have a chance to perhaps say a little bit more before we turn over to Q&A about the the future trajectories.
SPEAKER 8
Anna, can I thank you? I would like to maybe complement this picture with some of the kind of war and peace developments. Firstly, where we are now, Russia now controls 18% of our territory of Ukraine. Before February 2022, it controlled over 7%. So that is a kind of quite significant territorial gain given that Ukraine is a large country, according to the UN figures. I'm quoting September this year, 9000. Around 700 people have been killed civilians in the course of that conflict. Most of them were killed on the territory controlled by the government of Ukraine. And that that's over 7400. And the rest were killed on the territory controlled by the Russian forces. So you can draw the maybe a comparison to what's happening, as James just told us in Gaza. So this is the war duration of at over 20 months. Now military figures, as Yulia just said, certainly the sides talk about casualties on the other side. They do not want to talk about their own casualties. That's quite understandable. And the other figure is that about 3 million Ukrainian citizens became refugees in Russia. That figure fluctuates because when people apply for citizenship, they stop being refugees. And there is still up to even now, movement from the territory of Russia to Ukraine and vice versa. So this the military situation. Has been largely stagnant this year. And another matter of fact, Ukrainian counter-offensive this summer and autumn are caught back among half of what the Russian forces have taken during this war, during this, this year. So the kind of the gains, the territorial configuration has not changed massively as compared to the last year. What does it tell us first, that despite Western military aid and very courageous performance of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and kind of high motivation for the war effort, the Russian defences, which have been built about a year ago, have proved too difficult to take. The West, in my view, quite naively believed that something which can be done in the battlefield is what Western armies have not performed themselves. That is a massive ground offensive without. Air support. In this war, aviation hardly played any role because both sides, Russia and Ukraine have considerable air defences, which means that our air power, on which Western armies relied in operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, have been largely redundant. So. Win scenario of a major convention warfare, which entails heavy losses, and of course, minefields, which have to be, in the end, the crossed on foot and military vehicles. My concern is peace. I am very unpopular with this team because they believe in the military. Solution means that talking about peace is not very prominent. I have written about it policy. Policy impact of researches, I think is and James's comment is probably very minuscule, but I think that some important junctions for peace have been lost. One was in March 22nd when Russian offensive the Russian initial offensive did not go according to the plan. Russian leadership has been taken aback by the strength of Ukrainian mobilisation, but also by the weakness of its own military strategy and armed forces, so that at that time the Russian leadership was prepared to withdraw from the territories in suddenly in exchange for certain concessions, and negotiations started, and Israel to and Turkey, to the credit of the leaderships, have played very important roles at the time when mediation was needed that a peace effort did not go anywhere. There is a lot of speculation why? But. So that was one very important lost lost opportunity. The other lost opportunity was a year ago after Ukrainian successful surprise offensive in the north of Ukraine in Kharkiv region. Again, Russian leadership was taken by surprise and maybe less than the beginning. But still it was quite an important setback. I would say that that's the time when a Ukrainian negotiation position could have been probably at its utmost strength. Since then, I would say that in the war of attrition, Russia started to gain an upper hand just because it has greater capacity and it also has greater resources, greater population, and largely managed to learn lessons from their last years disasters. And now it's more on the upward trajectory. What made negotiations very any kind of viable peace initiative? Also quite difficult is that Ukraine has adopted, by the presidential decree a year ago that no negotiations with the with Russia are possible. Where while President Putin is in power. Which means that negotiations cannot be called with the Russian leadership. There is a lot of speculation how long President Putin will remain in power. So far, he does not show indication of being ready to drop dead in front of our eyes. So we would probably continue with the stalemate as it is.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you Anna. Very complex question. That was very succinctly. We'll come back. Like I said, your.
SPEAKER 8
Schooling dreams.
SPEAKER 6
To future. Future possibilities. Mark. I'm going. I want you in a moment, a little bit later to speak more about the global impact of this, but from your own vantage point, about peace. What's your assessment of the trajectories going forward?
SPEAKER 9
Well, I think we've had a brilliant overview from both Yuliya and Anna of the main things. I make a couple of points if I made three points possible. Firstly, I think it's underappreciated how well Ukraine has done in protecting civilians despite the huge barrage of Russian missiles and so on that we've seen and the atrocities we've seen, the horrific numbers in terms of the number of civilian lives lost. But the last very difficult problem I was closely engaged with when I was responsible for humanitarian affairs at the UN, was the civil war in northern Ethiopia, where 600,000 700,000, mostly civilians, lost their lives following an invasion by Eritrea and the deployment of Ethiopia's national army in Tigray. And so it shouldn't go without mention how well Ukraine has done, relatively speaking, in protecting civilians compared with northern Ethiopia or Syria or other places. The second observation I would make, which gets to your question on trajectory, is I think that what we need to see is in parallel a focus on reconstruction, but also sustaining the economy of Ukraine. Those two things will need to be done together, because I, like you, think this is going to last much longer than people would like it to last. And I think a significant area for improvement of European support for Ukraine, which by which I mean not just the EU but also non EU members of the European continent, including the UK, including others as well, would be much greater predictability and volume and change. Composition of economic support for Ukraine. The Europeans can fairly say that they don't have the military heft for example, that the US have, and 90% of the military support for Ukraine has come from the US, because that's the power with the resources. The Europeans do not have the same excuse on the economic side, and I think they would be wise to plan and lean in for a longer period of support for Ukraine than they are thinking about. And then lastly, on trajectories and prospects, I think. It's going to matter a lot how things play out in the US. It was very notable that while before all the fun and games over changing the speaker in the House of Representatives in the Congress, the deal that was done to keep the government going did not allow more support for Ukraine. And the person who's just assumed the speakership has a track record of being opposed to that. And there's a short term issue that arises from that, because Ukraine will need a lot more support with the air defences to get through what's expected to be a big barrage over this winter. But there's also a longer term issue as well. And I I'm not sure that European countries have been fast enough off the blocks in terms of thinking through the medium term implications of having a, you know, a very warlike neighbour and how you cope with that and prepare for that. I think people have been a little bit rose tinted about the prospects for a longer term US support. And, you know, I think we'll we'll have to see some changed decision making behaviours arising from that if Ukraine is to continue to hold the invasion of Bay.
SPEAKER 6
Mark. Thank you. Thank you for that. And you know, we might come back to the issue in the Q&A, the difference of the attitude towards sustained military support for Ukraine and the kind of almost unconditional support to the United States is extending to Israel. I said, you know, it exercises. It's quite brutal follow up on the brutal attack they suffered from Hamas. But we'll come back to that. David, I'm wondering if I can already ask you, unless you want to comment on this, I think I would trajectory of the piece and just a few.
S11
Another question and I'll be really very brief. But firstly, let me just say that this is a very impressive turnout for a Friday afternoon. So well done and especially a wet Friday afternoon. And also thanks for having me here. Now just very briefly, just to remind everyone that there was an African initiative, a peace initiative, I think in June this year when the African Union, you know, sent a delegation to both Moscow and Kiev and didn't get very far for all the reasons that I've already mentioned. But I just like to remind that what was in their package, their proposals could actually be what would be the basis of a peace deal if one was to emerge. And what they had in their proposal was the escalation of the conflict that the UN charter and the sovereignty of Ukraine should be respected. That and this was the offramp for Russia that the security guarantees should be given for, for Russia, since it claims that it has NATO on its borders and so on. Then, of course, they had something about supply chains food, fertiliser, fuels to the black, the Black Sea, humanitarian assistance for the victims of the of of the war, the return of refugees and children who were abducted and then the post-war reconciliation effort. You know, I mean, it was very interesting to see Africans doing this, but I guess this also speaks to the multi polarity of of the way the international system is evolving. And then some works of course, were saying at the same time why the Africans did not stop over in Khartoum and try to sort out before going to Kiev and, and Moscow and all that. But, but yeah, but I think, you know, whatever happens, I think these are the sort of elements, especially the offramp for Russia on the security aspect.
SPEAKER 6
Thank you David. It really is unprecedented, isn't it, to have this collective action from African states vis a vis a conflict in Europe?
S11
Absolutely. And as I said, it speaks to the growing sort of geopolitical fragmentation, this multi polarity that we're beginning to see. Although of course myself, I'm sceptical that the economic heft of the African countries and I'm sure will come to this. You know really it's really punching above your weight, you know, in these matters. But anyway, I'm.
SPEAKER 6
Going to come back to you in a moment. But first, Yuliya and Anna, a brief follow up, and then I want to get us on to the kind of global impact issues of the war.
SPEAKER 7
I want to just say a couple of words on the possibilities of peace, because I didn't get a chance. I didn't I didn't speak to that. So and partly it's on to what you were saying. Like, you know, I also think we can we can argue. Blue in the face as to what exactly happened in the March of 2022. And there was this talks about possibilities for peace negotiations while I was in Ukraine at the time, and I was following everything very closely. And I remember very well how these narratives were developing. And then, you know, Boris Johnson visited Kiev and the rest of it also. That's where Russian and Russians were. Russian troops were pushed out from the north of Kiev and mass graves and evidence of genocide, where evidence and the evidence and the point of public outrage over that was so high that no politician in charge of Ukraine, in their right mind, would have dared to sign anything that would have looked like a ceasefire with Russia at that point, because then Ukrainian people would themselves get rid of that kind of president. So that is something that I think needs to also be remembered, that Ukrainian people, when they are not happy with their leaders, have a very good way of getting rid of them very fast. And I so I joke about it a bit that, you know, finally, Ukrainians have leaders who are actually in the popular will, and that is Zelensky actually refusing to accept any peace deal that doesn't include Russians leaving Ukrainian constitutional borders. So in that way, to me, the possibility for peace was lost on the 24th February of 2022. There were already DPP's deals, ceasefires signed with Russia involved. First of all, there was already a Budapest memorandum signed in mid 90s when Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in exchange of security guarantees from countries that included Russia. And then Russia goes and invades Ukraine. And that also presents a very serious international challenge for nuclear and otherwise disarmament, because if if permanent security member states of the United Nations nuclear powers throw away their own security guarantees, who who will want to voluntarily give up their weapons? So, of course, again, the whole militarisation is a separate conversation that we can be having for a very long time. But those things are very important. So another thing, another stumbling block in signing up any peace treaties is that the map of Ukraine and Russia, that Ukraine and Russia see a different maps. Russia already annexed four oblast of Ukraine and Crimea in violation of all international laws and Ukrainian domestic laws, including territories of some oblast that Russian troops were not in at that time. What any of that means, hell knows. But that's Russian foreign policy. And will what would need to happen domestically in Russia for Russia to say, well, we are giving up those supplies now. They're Ukraine. This is for for people who specialise in Russia to, to, to answer to because like you, you know that stuff better than I do. Like there can be some sort of, you know, reverence discursive that they could go into. But this is not something that you can step away very easily. And when every Ukrainian knows and has relatives in occupied territories that are tortured, kidnapped, mutilated, castrated, raped, they know what's going to happen to those people if you leave them behind. Nobody will want to agree to that kind of. That's not peace.
SPEAKER 6
Yeah. So I think this paints a very stark picture of the prospects for coming to.
SPEAKER 7
Yeah. And I think there will need to be something that will be classified as military defeat of Russia, what shape that will take and what it will look like. It's for us to see. But you do not sign peace treaties with genocidal war criminals. This is a terrible international precedent, and I do not want to live to see that kind of thing. What I think some people, when they think about kicking Russian troops out and a military defeat of Russia, they imagine that there will be some sort of ironing out of territory all the way to the border. It doesn't have to be that. It has to be something that qualifies as a defeat geopolitically. And then there may be a cease fire, pullback of troops, perhaps international peacekeepers. It can take all sorts of different scenarios.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you Anna. Fairly briefly if possible. And then I want to shift the discussion a little bit.
SPEAKER 8
Yeah sure. A couple of different points. One is about what you mentioned. Yeah the African Peace Initiative. Or we also should see give credit to the Chinese leadership, the Israeli leadership, Turkish. They have all came up with ideas, with good offices, with trying to be fair to all sides at a time when help was needed. The reason that these efforts so far have not came to fruition are quite complicated, but we do see a real rise of multiple clarity that there is not just one kind of centre of the world, especially especially given that the UN Security Council is so hopelessly paralysed. We also should see this initiative in the global debate on decolonisation, and I'm quite sad that it has not been seen here in that light, because I think that is kind of quite considerable political weight, irrespective of what the outcome, what we have seen so far in terms of what future bears, I have lived and worked in Syria for the UN and I have seen a long war from within, and I know what it does to state and society, to how population relates to the original causes, how they endure, what fatigue war fatigues, fatigue does for mass, kind of pro-war military mobilisation. And I think that is the processes which we start seeing in Ukraine are pointing in that direction. Long war, exhaustion, fatigue, immigration. Russia has overturned the worst situation. It was in last year. It is now on the upward trajectory. Its economy has been growing 2% this year. So it does its it both economically and politically. It can endure and absorb the costs which are not as high as expected.
SPEAKER 6
Yeah, I think the extension of the war in the length of time is going to see enormous suffering and a long war from within recalls the situation in Palestine as well, for facing a very long war indeed. I want to I want to shift gears just a little bit so that we can cover a bit more terrain about the impact of this war beyond the borders of Russia and Ukraine. So it was very striking to me when war. Real coward to immediately see. I hadn't quite realised I knew Ukraine is a breadbasket of that region, but also the extent to which so many countries and particularly countries in North Africa, Egypt, something like 50, 60% of its grain was coming from Ukraine. So we saw an immediate impact on food prices, food security, etcetera, from, from, from this and of of course, we we have seen, you know, this reverberate through sub-Saharan Africa in particular. So not only in North Africa and the Middle East. We withdraw from the market. There's an enormous amount of food production. So, you know, this is clearly for me, it was one of the most obvious immediate impacts. But then, you know, clearly the the war provokes a sort of geopolitical shifts as well. And to where you saw the same mercenaries that were acting on behalf of Russia and Ukraine intervening and fighting increasingly, you know, in in the Sahel and, you know, in Africa. So the geopolitical alignments also shifting. So I just wanted to get onto this terrain a little bit. So how do you. I want to start with you, David. How do I see some of these impacts of the war affecting developing country prospects? Yeah.
S11
Um, where do we begin? Because it's quite a broad question. You know, firstly, let me sort of approach this from an African perspective. And I think the first thing that we saw in the UN General Assembly votes is that the African countries themselves were quite split. I think about 48% of them voted in favour of the resolution condemning the Russian invasion. So that was the majority I think about. 35. Close to 40%. Abstain. About 10 or 12%. They didn't vote to no show at all. And actually, only one African country voted with Russia. And that was Eritrea, which is, you know, sort of a barrier anyway. Then there was another vote a few weeks later on Russia's membership of the UN Human Rights Council. And that vote from the Africans mirrored more or less what we saw in the General Assembly. So very clearly for the Africans, this principle of non inviolability of international borders is very important. And that, you know, that's only makes sense because as new states themselves don't want to see their borders being invaded and so on. But as we've already mentioned, we are seeing this multiple already. And so we are seeing all these actors wanting to step into this to see, you know, how they could exercise their own interests in relation to the food security aspect. And here I'm actually right now doing some research on Africa's food security. And one of the surprising findings is that contrary to what is portrayed in the media, the impact on Africa has not been that much. That's because the trade flows are small. Let me sort of break this down. Firstly, there was already a post-pandemic surge in prices. You know, as we all know, the inflationary surge, the monetary tightening and and all that in sort of 2021, 22. But then when you look at the FAO Food Price Index for March 2022, there was a spike, you know, about ten basis points on the spike, I think, from about 133 points to about 143 points. So very dramatic impact. And and if you look at the trajectory of the index throughout the this century, since 2000, which I've looked at, there were only two other spikes, but which were not as high as what we saw in March 2022. And that was in 2007 to 8, the the financial crisis. And then also in 2011, when there was a surge in commodity prices, which had to do with Chinese demand and so on. So very clearly, the war had an impact in terms of the trade flows with the African countries. As you mentioned already, James, it was mainly North African countries like Egypt, the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa to some extent. And this had to do with wheat, barley, sunflower, sunflower oil, where the sort of imports from both Ukraine and, and, and and Russia. But the quantities are relatively small because these the imports are quite diversified for these products. Also they're getting these products from places like the US, Canada, even parts of Europe and so on. And so if you think about it, Africans eat rice throughout the continent, which is not produced by these countries. And also in West Africa there is huge consumption of Yemen cassava because, you know, since they're working on food security, I've looked at broken down the sort of basic foods in East Africa is mainly maize and imports from places like the US, you know, for the deficit and even I looked again, even at beer production, which uses barley in Africa, is mostly sorghum that is now used. So, you know, so contrary to what one sees in the media, it's not been as dramatic. But of course, you know, the food price hikes and these places that have been affected and, and so on, it has impacted, impacted them. And that's what, of course, led to the Black Sea Grain initiative, which as we know, you know, it was was negotiated by Turkey in July 2022, I think it was. And then, of course, Russia has pulled out of it about 12 months later, did not allow it to be renewed and so on. And this also was one of the issues that the Africans were pursuing when they launched their peace initiative.
SPEAKER 6
I'm going to come back to you about the more geopolitical impact in relationship to Africa. But Mark, first, before I know that you did some work. On the food crisis.
SPEAKER 9
So I agree with what David has said. I would add just a few points. I mean, firstly, it was a real problem when Ukrainian grain markets were closed. Lots of UN agencies had contracts to buy Ukrainian grain, WFP in particular to provide in famine or famine risk contexts. That was a huge a huge problem. And it was solved by two things basically, firstly, the Black Sea grain initiative, which allowed some of the grain out, but secondly, the putting on the table of $5 billion by Samantha Power from the US agency for International Development, because the price gone up, getting the grain was more expensive. There was a clear and present danger of a famine, which is the most extreme form of a humanitarian crisis in a small number of countries in Somalia, in South Sudan, in Yemen, potentially in Afghanistan. And there was a man made, in my opinion. I mean, I've been quoted publicly on this, much to the annoyance of some of my friends in the relevant government, there was effectively a man made famine in northern Ethiopia already playing out. Not because of this, but because of the war. So that intervention did prevent what would have been a very stark, extreme tragedy, the like of which we've largely got rid of in the human condition in the 21st century. So that was it was important that happened. But I do agree with you that otherwise people broadly coped quite well. And of course, the other thing the Black Sea Grain initiative did was buy time for there to be substitution away from Ukrainian grain. In 2021, Ukraine produced 86 million tonnes of grain, mostly wheat and maize. In 2022, because of the war, it was down to 64 million. But. But this year, the best projections I've seen are more like 35 or so. And that is not having a massive effect on markets because there's been substitution elsewhere, including, I'm afraid to say, ironically, higher Russian levels of production and export, and also in some of Ukraine's Western neighbours, where there's now this tension that's emerged between Polish farmers and Ukrainian farmers, which is an unfortunate dimension of what's what's happened, I think I think otherwise on the geopolitics. My own view is, is not so much that many countries in the developing world have changed. Their view is just that their views have been crystallised and have been clearer to lots of Western countries who, frankly, were not paying enough attention to how many of these countries felt about how things were playing out. And that goes back to it goes back to failures in the pandemic, especially both on the vaccine side, but also an atrocious failure to provide economic support in the course of the pandemic in the way that had been done during the course of the 2008 nine financial crisis, where people have forgotten now. In February 2009, Gordon Brown convened. The G20 was able to generate $1 trillion, which did ease the impact of the financial crisis. It's by far the best crisis in terms of how they've coped, the developing countries have been through, and the atrocious failure to do that during the pandemic, together with other things, meant that when the invasion happened, the starting point for many countries the West thought they could rely on was not what the West had believed.
SPEAKER 6
I think that's I think that's really important because we see much deeper underlying transformations going on, not even to mention, you know, a greater role of China and sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the developing world, Latin American countries, etcetera. Christiana, I know you wanted to come back on this.
SPEAKER 8
Just very briefly. I think that what Mark has so Mark has already.
SPEAKER 7
Alluded to.
SPEAKER 8
Is, yes, we cannot take European politics out of the Green Deal because it's not only about Ukrainian green, it's also about Russian green and how much they can or cannot export and where. But Black Sea is not the only route by which Ukrainian grain can reach markets. It can. There are land routes or one land route is through Eastern Europe, countries of the European Union, Poland, Slovakia, on the western borders of Ukraine. The other route is via Belarus. These routes have proved very complicated, mainly for political reasons to do with the countries on Ukraine's borders, because they do produce a lot of grain themselves. Their inputs are higher price, so they are production costs more. And we are seeing now the kind of becomes a political issue in these countries. Elections in Slovakia, Polish politics route via Belarus again blocked for political reasons. So yeah, we cannot just say that everything is pegged on the Black Sea port.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. I want to ask this one last question. And, Yulia, you can bring in your. I'll let you go first with this. And so that we can move to the audience's questions, which I'm sure they'll be many. So. This war is having a we've alluded to it, a transformative impact on both Russia and Ukraine. And and it's really likely to to. To transform the role they may play in global politics, in the global political economy in the future. I know earlier we were talking earlier and you had some, I think, important insights into where Ukraine has stood and where it's standing now and in the context of this war in terms of global politics. But but also this is having a profound impact, I think, in Russia and Russia's place in the international. So I'm wondering if just briefly, because I do want to get on to the questions from audience who might want to respond to this.
SPEAKER 7
And sorry. I thought you were looking at. Go. Thank you. Thank you for that question. I want to first going to finish speaking about the like just a couple of points to this, to the excellent discussion about the food security and kind of to bring it to a kind of slightly kind of wider perspective and more long term horizons. Wars are ecocide events by definition, global military is responsible for 5.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and that's in addition to all sorts of other waste, contamination and toxic chemicals. In the first year of this war, 122 million tons of CO2 alone, where where thrown up in the atmosphere that wouldn't have been there otherwise. So wars contribute to global heating and therefore further compromise future food security. This is very important. This is just in the first year. On top of that, there is, of course, heavy contamination and mining of agricultural land. Some 30% of land in Ukraine are mined. I do not like using that statistic too much because some areas are very densely mined, some not. So we are talking about the kind of square mileage, but some areas are less contaminated than the rest. But it's quite problematic and expensive to do so. That land that could be used to alleviate world hunger, to bring down international prices, it will take a while for it to be usable again. On top of that, of course, we have the blowing up of the dam this summer that has emptied the massive water reservoir, compromised safety of the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe. I really hope it doesn't blow up, but we still don't know what's going to happen with that. But also what it does. It changes water tables, right? There is ecosystem damage from that. But if we're talking specifically food security, it changes water tables in the whole region. And that is in the region that is the most fertile and abundant. Right? So there are still effects for us to see of, of that fact. And again, also war isn't over. There is ongoing contamination in Ukraine also is not the only war. So the more wars we have, the faster we are bringing our own extinction date in terms of the place of Ukraine and in the whole region in the world politics. I think this I'll just try, I'll try to be brief here. The longer the war goes on. And I've already documented this in my previous work that since Ukraine became independent, and it is also kind of a sign of a number of other, quote unquote, post-Soviet states. Some people don't like the terminology anymore, but I think it is still relevant to specifically in academic discussions. A lot of those states have suffered, developed through all sorts of barrage of issues that were associated with transition to market that we can discuss in Q&A, should you be interested. And of course, financial crisis. Then one war and or another have further exacerbated these situations in Ukrainian case specifically, but in other countries to different extents, and that some Ukrainian scholars talk about Ukraine as being the northernmost country of global South. And in that sense, economically and socioeconomically speaking, Ukraine is most similar to Latin American and African countries, some of them at the very least, and some in Ukraine, may like to think that also hurts me to accept that a lot of socio economic advantages and developmental achievements that existed have been rolled back, and this is something that Ukraine is not. If we're talking specifically about neoliberal reforms, Ukraine has not been extreme, it has not been completely unique. And we are now sitting in London. It's in UK that cannot regulate its water companies to stop them from dumping sewage in fresh water resources. So from successes of post-war rebuilding, post-Second World War rebuilding, we are looking at a case where the state is failing to regulate basic public safety. Right? So when UK government is advising Ukrainian, I'm really worried, to be entirely honest with you, there are a lot of excellent things that British government has done for Ukraine, and I will always be grateful for Boris Johnson being really scared of losing his office in England and trying to play Churchill in the Ukrainian case, because Ukraine really benefited from that. He really riled up support for Ukraine when the war started, and Americans were sitting on their hands with armed supplies at the time. But but overall, the war has really weakened Ukrainian economic situation. It has now created a lot of problems. Limbs and a kind of thrown back the kind of diplomatic achievements that Russia had. And I think you can you can speak to that way more than than I can. But it is there are a lot of complications, shall we say, is the most English way I can put it, that have that have come out of this horrendous escalation that will be there with us for decades to come.
SPEAKER 6
Yulia, thank you very much. I'm going to know, I promise that we have 45 minutes. So we have only a couple of minutes before that. 45 minutes has to start for Q&A. So maybe just really briefly if you want to say something about about the prospects. More widely internationally. For, especially perhaps for Russia in the.
SPEAKER 8
Well I thought I o the question was also about domestic gestation, but I think it's quite I think it's quite.
SPEAKER 6
I'll come back during Q&A.
SPEAKER 8
I think, but I think it's quite important. I will try to to be a woman of few words and yes, and make two points, one domestically, one well situation and Russia has stabilised. And maybe paradoxically, the identification with the Russian state has grown. Last year we had quite a lot of people leaving Russia, either escaping mobilisation or being anti war or feeling that Russia would go, the economy would go to dogs. That didn't happen. So now there is a return back to Russia, especially of kind of young professionals who are started feeling that job prospects and general living standards for them are better in Russia than abroad, and the fear of mobilisation is not as acute. Also, we have a millions of people now involved in grassroot campaign of help our boys at the front. This, this is not organised by the state thus purely kind of grassroot initiative, especially women's groups. So yeah, civil society in action may be not what the West thought Russian civil society would be, but there is a lot of grassroot action in that kind of helping the helping our guys, not necessarily meaning that these people support the war. And internationally, developments show that Russia is not as isolated as the West has hoped for. Yes, friends like North Korea and Iran are probably not the kind of our friends of necessity rather than by choice. But but still, Russian narrative is heard is diplomacy is active. It is actually developing a lot of links with the African countries and parts of the globe where Russian diplomacy has been, which Russian diplomacy has neglected in the period before the war.
SPEAKER 9
Thank you. David, can I tell you a little anecdote about just to illustrate a point you just made when I was in charge of humanitarian affairs at the U.N., I used to sometimes go to Moscow and talk to lots of people. And I went a couple of times to the Russian Ministry for emergencies, and they showed me their operations room. And it's a room which has the the biggest set of screens on the wall that I've ever seen anywhere. And it's got this amazing bench of set of benches of people on in white leather chairs and all very high tech. It looks like something out of James Bond. This room and these chairs are all occupied by particular emergency specialists, because the job of this, this outfit is to respond to all sorts of emergencies and disasters. So they've got the infrastructure specialists, they've got the power specialists, the telecoms people, they've got the chemicals people in case there's some kind of fire. And then so they described all these desks and who sat where to me. And then there were two spaces that they hadn't described. So. So I said, so who sits in these two chairs? And the answer was, well, in one chair sits the communication specialists, and in the other chair sits the psychologist. And the message was. Understanding and managing public opinion is the most important thing in any emergency. And one thing we know about President Putin is that he is brilliant at doing those things. And that is why public opinion in the way you've described it is as it is.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. I'm going to get David the last word here.
S11
I'll be I'll be brief. I'll just take on this question of how far Russia is making gains with the African countries. If you recall, there was the Russian Africa summit in July. I think it was 17. African leaders showed up when the same summit was held in Sochi in 2019. There are about 43 African leaders there. So I think that tells you that the Africans are being very cautious on this. And then another aspect, of course, is that of course, the old Soviet Union supported African liberation, liberation movements and and all that. But Ukraine, Ukraine was part of that. So I think the Africans understand this. Plus there have been more students, actually African students studying in Ukraine than in Russia. You recall when the war broke out, there was this crisis of the students and so on. Let me just stop there. But, you know, just to make the point that I think the Africans are being cautious not to be drawn into this.
SPEAKER 6
Yuliya, I'm going to let you make your point when you come in to answer some questions here, because if I don't move to the audience, we're going to lose them.
S12
So one sentence.
SPEAKER 6
One sentence. Okay.
SPEAKER 7
To the state of Russia and to managing public opinion. The data on how well Russia is performed is being all taken from Ross State. This is all I'm going to say. They've changed their heads. How many times last year? Yeah. And they haven't actually collected any proper data since the second quarter of 2022. Thank you.
SPEAKER 6
I wonder if you ever saw the screens in the Pentagon?
SPEAKER 9
Yeah, I've seen some of them, but.
SPEAKER 6
It come to that. Okay. All right. All right. First of all, I want to thank all our speakers. And let's do that now. And then I'm going to ask you that.
UNKNOWN
Other. Well, we're, we're.
SPEAKER 6
We're going to do this again and thank them again when we're finished. Now I really would like to open up to your questions. And, you know, I'm going to propose that we take three at a time. So if you could take note, our panellists of the questions, you don't have to answer every question. And the briefer we are with questions and only one question, please. Not the first question. The second question is one question, please. And I'll come back to you if we have time. And our speakers will try to be concise as well. So let me let me start first of all so you don't feel left out. Let's let's start up on top here. Right here. Yeah.
S13
Hi, my name's Oliver. I was wondering, what impact does this war have on security concerns between China and Taiwan?
SPEAKER 6
Like China and Taiwan and back. Okay. Down here, I saw I where did I say okay? Right here in the middle.
S14
Thank you so much. I forget who mentioned it, but someone pointed to the fact that the US has been a main driver of military aid in Ukraine, and obviously we're all seeing the package that the US is trying to meld with the Ukrainian aid alongside aid for Gaza. Just curious how and Israel curious how you think that's going to impact what's going on in Ukraine if those aides are either collected together or if it ends up being separate?
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Yeah. And the gentleman here. Yeah.
S15
My question is to David, look.
SPEAKER 6
Maybe you say who you are. Yeah.
S15
My name is Joseph Kyari and I'm from Kenya. My question is to David Luke. You said that the war has not had significant impact on Africa's food security. Would you say what other area is perhaps significantly affected by the war in Africa?
SPEAKER 6
Okay, so very briefly let's answer those questions. So many more questions. So going first.
SPEAKER 9
I'm happy to respond to all of this question, which I think is a really smart question. Yeah. There's very little that politicians across the aisle agree on in Washington DC at the moment. But one of them is anxiety about how to manage relations with China and particular over Taiwan, but not just over that. And one way to understand the actually very high levels of US support for Ukraine is in that context, because one line of thinking you hear and I've heard this from, you know, Obama administration officials from GW, Bush administration officials from Trump officials and from Biden officials is we it would be very bad news in respect of our concerns over Taiwan if Russia have an easy victory in Ukraine. So they see the Ukraine situation partly through the prism of hoping to put off the Chinese from a military adventure in Taiwan, against the background of having heard lots of things that XI Jinping has said about the importance of the year 2027. So that definitely is going on. And the question you ask is a is a good one because of that. Very good.
S11
David. Yes, I think Mark, you know, helps to qualify my remarks on the food security situation by saying that, yes, indeed. You know, countries in North Africa, Egypt in particular in the Horn of Africa, where have been affected. So I, I just want to put that in context. But I did also say that, you know, broad parts of Africa does not consume those products. That was the point I was making. But I think one of the ways that the war is impacted.Yeah, one of the ways it was impacted development more broadly is in development assistance. If you take the UK, you know, the UK slashed its development assistance budget because of its support to Ukraine. And you see this replicated all across the OECD countries. I don't have the figures in front of me, but basically development aid has been significantly reduced as the support to Ukraine as has been increased. And, you know, I'll give you one anecdote. I'm on the Board of Trade Mark Africa, which was supported very strongly by the UK. And we've been struggling in that organisation to find funds for projects that we had already committed because of the cuts in, in, in development aid across the board. So I think this is one area that really has been affected by the by the war. Then of course, I did mention the students. A lot of students had their education interrupted. You know, I think the number for Nigeria is about 5000 Nigerian students in Ukraine, and these were mostly in the sciences, engineering, medicine, you know, and so on, had their education interrupted. So that's another impact of the of the war. So yeah, I'll stop here. Thank you very.
SPEAKER 6
Much, Anna.
SPEAKER 8
Just briefly on the US military aid, my argument is that our Western military assistance has perhaps peaked or lost some already, and the tendency towards gradual scaling down has been settled even before the upheaval in Israel. Gaza. So what's happening now with Israel? Just kind of accelerate the trend which has been already there. That doesn't mean that the aid would stop, but the scaling down step by step would be likely. See a series. Also a good example. So we see what happened under Obama and Trump. And it's kind of on the kind of decline trajectory.
SPEAKER 7
Yuliya I will just just to this one point on military aid and I will set out on the other ones. I think the answered quite, quite exhaustively. I. I do not know. But what I did with that word. I do not. I do not see US military aid to Ukraine stopping. And I think it's important to look to previous conflicts for this, for potential clues, but for complicated and for all sorts of different reasons, unfair for good and bad reasons and fair situation. Ukraine is in the middle of Europe and allowing that to escalate, to be annihilated as easily and turn a blind eye to it as easily as it is to turn to Syria is not quite an option for the European Union. And we saw that with treatment of refugees that was quite different to South than 14, and we saw that with all sorts of other aspects of aid, including military. So I wouldn't just because there is there's perhaps been some sort of dip, I wouldn't necessarily expect that to be a permanent full stop at the end of that sentence.
SPEAKER 6
Thank you.
S11
If I just a quick point here actually made it very cleverly is tied. Biden very cleverly has tied the his request for funding to the Congress to also request for Israel. So we're going to have to see how that plays out.
SPEAKER 6
Yeah. Of course, there is a kind of unknown factor in the United States the next election and what may result from that. Okay. I want to go back to all of you. Where's the microphone? Down here. Yeah, here to Vladimir.
S16
Hello everyone. My name is Vladimir and my question is what obstacles do multinational corporations pose? Like Lockheed Martin, who is interested in benefiting from supplying weapons, oil, oil companies who are benefiting from rising oil prices, and large food monopolies, who are also interested in privatising, for example, some resources which Ukraine possesses.
SPEAKER 6
I'm going to exercise Laura's discretion of getting a gender balance. So.
S17
Hello, my name is Dua. I'm from Lebanon. My question is about how do you see the Russian-Ukrainian war on the global security scale in terms of increased aggression in Azerbaijan, Karabakh and the rise of the far right governments and policies? And just to reflect on his like, how do you see also the global impact on oil prices and energy markets?
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you. And can we have right here in front.
S18
Hello, my name is Miriam. To kind of piggyback off of the question in regard regarding the $100 billion aid package from the United States. I think part of Biden's messaging domestically is that the war in Russia and the war in Israel and Palestine are connected in terms of America's strategic interests and also kind of the America's enemies. And so I'm interested to hear your insights on what a potential expansion of the war in the Middle East would mean for the war in Ukraine.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you. I'm going to go to the panel. Who wants to go first?
SPEAKER 9
Come on. Well, thank you, James. At least I get to choose which question to answer. Yes first. So there's a very good set of questions. Vladimir, the unpleasant truth is there are always money. There's always money in wars. And one of the tricky things public policy officials and governments have to do is try to contain that. And I'm not an expert on exactly what businesses are doing, what everyone can see. What's happened in energy markets looks to me as though this winter will be less frenetic and difficult than last winter was in energy markets, which will hold down the extreme levels of profits some of those businesses are making. The arms industry is making a killing. And by the way, people are not paying enough attention to the scale up in a sustained way of Russia's domestic arms industry. Ukraine is trying to do that as well. But Russia, of course, there's so many more resources. So that whole area you talk about with would justify more attention being paid to it. I think that. Quite a lot of the other conflicts we've seen, you mentioned Nagorno-Karabakh. We talked about northern Ethiopia. James mentioned the Sahel earlier. Quite a lot of the of those sorts of conflicts are best understood as a symptom, really, of our current geopolitics, that we're past an era where the deterrent provided by the possibility or probability of big powers intervening is very strong. And that has made meant that lots of people have been willing to have a go or, you know, to dare to do things in the past they might not have done. And I'm not optimistic that we're going to get out of this new era very quickly. It's a complicating factor of the modern world that we live in, I think.
SPEAKER 6
Thank you for that depressing outlook on.
S19
Well.
SPEAKER 8
Yes, I think just briefly. Well, in the answer to your question, we have seen a notable rise in violence during this year in places which we thought were, frankly speaking, quite dormant. You mentioned Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, Azerbaijan, a forceful change of the territory we have. We are seeing tense situation, Kosovo, Serbia again, that has been seen as kind of largely scaling down. Israel regarded Gaza as something which does not present an acute military threat. That's why the reaction now, as we see the tide of violence on the rise, we are also seeing a possibility of domino effect, a much greater Middle East. You know better than I do, I think. And we also can see that the international mechanisms are becoming quite paralysed as compared by the Nut to the 90s. But we also see that our kind of unlikely players like Russia, for example, or Iran can play also a kind of maybe positive role in getting out of the kind of the real threat of a wider regional war and yet, well, US politics. It's a phenomenally exciting subject. But certainly we are going to have elections next year. And for Democrats and, you know, Biden especially, he doesn't his people do not want Ukraine to be to become a stick with which Republicans are going to beat him up. So it so some kind of wrapping up of this issue would be very beneficial for Biden's campaign.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you. Will you.
SPEAKER 7
Yeah. So briefly because I think a lot of a lot of the points were answered already. Which companies benefit here? Well, just to be a little to wake up the audience a bit at the end. Well, you can say that Russian oil companies have actually quite benefited from the spike in the prices on oil. So yeah, if you just want to want to go with, with, you know, cui bono, you know, there can be all sorts of directions you can go there. But of course, some companies have for all sorts of combination of reasons of better competitive advantages than the other. And depending on whether we're talking Ukraine, whether we're talking international markets, we're talking Russia. We're talking turkey. Different combination of players will be in place. So yeah, I think like depending on which region we pick up, which market, in which commodities and at what time, there will be different beneficiaries. But just like with vaccine, just because pharmaceuticals are making money of it, it doesn't mean they started the thing just to leave that there. In terms of escalation in the Middle East, I also think they can earn potential engagement of large powers, and it's spilling over into too many parties can function as quite a deterrent. It's up for us to see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed because, like many other people expect, I don't know. They do not want that to become more worse than it what it already is. I don't think it's also in the strategic interest of Israel to escalate it any much further, because there is only so much turning of a blind eye that the United States can do to what is being done in terms of civilian casualties and and attacks towards Palestinians. I just wanted to say, like, because we're all researchers and students and scholars here, I think you made an important point about dormant areas that people didn't expect to kind of erupt. This is something that you need to indicate to us that there is no such thing as permanently frozen conflicts and dormant areas. They can always erupt at any point. And if we are thinking about planning for peace and thinking about peaceful resolutions of any conflict, unless there is some sort of transitional justice and also socio economic justice that's being done in the process, there is always preconditions for future eruption that is there just kind of as a broader theme. And when too many things start giving way at the same time, more those who are doubtful feel like this is the time to start doing something. So thank you. I hope some lessons I learned from David.
S11
I think, okay.
SPEAKER 6
Let's go back to the audience to get some more questions. Yes.
S20
I am Rafael Russell and LSC alum, I thank you for such an insightful discussion. Quick question. So Germany is in recession. UK is hovering around a recession like US is facing one of the highest budget deficits. How will these events affect the support of Ukraine despite their willingness to support the country long term? Thank you. Okay.
SPEAKER 6
Largely about the US budget deficit. Who do we have up here? Yeah. Here.
S14
He. Yeah. Hi. I'm a student in The International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies program. Quickly after the Ukraine crisis began, we saw the international community very quickly fund billions of dollars for the humanitarian response in Ukraine, which is great. However, I'm wondering if you think that that response was kind of disproportionate in comparison to the humanitarian responses we see in northern Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, etcetera.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you very much. Important question. And okay, we have to we have to give Laura a chance.
S21
Thank you. My question is for Yuliya and Anna. I wanted to ask, when it comes one day to negotiation, what do you think are the kind of red lines on both sides? And what are the kind of more bending lines? That might be a difficult thing to accept, but might one day be surpassed? And I would like to know that in Russian domestic politics and Ukrainian domestic politics.
S22
Can I add to that? Yes. The mighty.
S23
Please. Here because you're predicting a long war and we can all see the arguments for that. On the other hand, there's also exhaustion and killing and suffering, which leads me to think a frozen conflict is quite a likely thing not resolving it, not a proper peace, but sort of, you know, running down. And I'd just like to comment on that.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you very much, Claire. All right. I'm going to go back to the panel. If you're fairly concise, we may have round room for another round of questions. Do you want to go first?
SPEAKER 9
Can I ask the name of the person who asked about the impact on the wider humanity? Mary. Mary. Great. So partly because it's a great question, partly because I'm involved with teaching on your course, I'm going to give you the 200 page answer to all. The book.
SPEAKER 6
You want.
SPEAKER 9
But the you'll need, you'll need. Thank you for Claire reviewed it. So if you come down afterwards, the so you draw attention to a huge contextual problem, which is that because the causes of humanitarian problems globally conflict, climate change, Covid have been mounting, the systems come under huge stress and the gap between needs and funds available have been growing. And one thing that's happened with the Ukraine crisis is. The decision makers, which are mostly public officials in Western and some Middle Eastern countries, when they're deciding what to which crisis to respond to, they're like seven year olds on a football pitch. They all run after the same thing. And what that means is Ukraine is a crisis which have massive funding, taking money away from other things at the beginning of last year. So it's not just the gap has got bigger, the distribution has got worse as well, and we need to find ways of getting that talked about more, particularly in public, because that is how we will redress that, that problem.
SPEAKER 6
David, do you want to?
S11
The only thing on that to that is that some have pointed out also the imbalance in how refugees, asylum seekers are treated. That, you know, people coming from other places other than Ukraine have had a more difficult time getting their claims heard and so on compared with Ukraine. I would also just point out that Russia very seriously has allowed, you know, certainly in the case of Africans to come to Russia. Visa, visa free, no visas or whatever, you know, sort of to sort of show up this, this issue. But yeah, but that has also been one way that this this has played out.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. We have the red lines that Laura asked about in class issue around frozen conflict. So let me turn to Anna and then Yuliya.
SPEAKER 8
Yeah. But also briefly to the question on the kind of how much Western societies would be prepared to bear the costs of assistance to Ukraine. That very much depends on how much it is a matter of electoral politics in. Well, we are going to have the year 2024. There will be quite a lot of elections, important elections in various countries, including in Europe, in this country, in the United Kingdom. Ukraine is is not an issue for electoral politics, but in a number of other countries it is so that and Western politicians, of course, have to be sensitive to what societies and the electorate feels and how they subsequently are going to vote on the acceptable compromises. I think it is, of course, a moving target, because what was what seemed to be acceptable in March 2022 is now quite a long way. So now and I'm not well, okay, let's take Putin out of the picture. Let's put a kind of more attractive, younger English speaking. Guy in the driving seat, more likely a guy rather than a lady. And I think, okay, what I can or cannot do. And one thing which is fairly obvious that Russia would not be able to give up all the territories of Ukraine as it emerged in 1991, no Russian politician would give up Crimea and it would be some territories would certainly can be returned. But some kind of territorial acquisition in one form or another would probably be would have to be part of the deal from the Russian side if they managed to take more of the territory, which I don't think that it's the current plan, but things can change. Of course. I think now the strategy is really defensive and maybe improving the battlefield configuration rather than looking at kind of major gains, but that also can change if there will be a sense we can do it. There may be another major attempt on another major offensive. So that's part of the deal. I think what Russia would be prepared to give well, it would not be called reparations, but some kind of compensation package to Ukraine that would be possibly a part of the deal, you know, free gas for another 50 years, something, something like this. So that's that's where kind of it is. Also within the elite, many in the elite want to wrap it up. It is hurting business. It's hurting the economy. They want to have a lifting of some sanctions and better relations with the West. But society can bear the costs. And that's that's where we are.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you. Yuliya.
SPEAKER 7
Right. So I'll just combine the. Support for Ukraine with the red lines and potential some conflict. I don't think Russia is interested in this conflict being frozen. Now there is Ukraine, so I doubt that it will become necessarily that. Of course, a lot of that depends on, again, the will population to fight arms, supplies and dozens of other factors. Ukrainians do do not want to give up. Of course, everybody gets tired of the war, but Ukrainians are fighting for their own land and their own people. It's one thing to be tired as a Russian conscript, and that's another thing to be tired as a father of children who are behind your back in their house. So those are quite different things, right? Some Russians are coming back to Russia because they can't find opportunities elsewhere, as we've already heard. It wouldn't necessarily I wouldn't necessarily interpret that as a as an indication of people seeing a better a great life in Russia. There are many Ukrainians who are coming back to Ukraine from Europe as well, because it's more familiar. It's convenient to them, even though they live with air raid sirens and risks of being shelled. Right. So there is that is the that's the car's reality of being a citizen of a country that's involved in a war. The red lines for Ukrainians is constitutional borders. Crimea is a is a matter that is quite of a special case that people don't like to talk about an awful lot because it's a it's a painful matter, not least because, of course, there were ethnic purges and deportations of Crimean Tatars conducted by the Soviets. So, so as to kind of create the imitation of a Russian speaking majority on the peninsula. And so there is there are also rights of crime of Crimean Tatars that are at stake, their their right to return home. That will have been that would need to be accepted as something that we give up. If Crimea is to stay with Russia, which is something that Ukraine will not agree to. So how, how and where the both parties will be willing or asked to accept red lines will will depend on what? When this war is over? Under what conditions? What kind of Russia this war ends with? Is Putin still there or you know, someone else? How willing are they to actually accept some of the guilt, pay some reparations, do some, participate in some sort of transitional justice processes so as to re-establish international connections, including trade connections? All of that will make a massive difference on what kind of configuration we will be looking at. There are many Russians who are really tired of this war. What we get from surveys, I wouldn't trust it as far as I can show it, because people live in permanent fear surveys in a state where everybody is technically a hostage. You know, there are, of course, there are many Russians who are cheering on to the war, and we shouldn't kid ourselves with that. There are many who are really excited about it. There are those who are simply, you know, they have their relatives thrown to the front, and of course they are supporting them, sending them, you know, collecting the money for shoes, clothes, whatever, because it's their relatives. War is ugly for everyone, but there are those who are gleefully killing Ukrainians, and that's also a fact. And raping and castrating, including children. That is also a fact. And without proper transitional justice being established, there can be never any lasting peace put in place, no matter what kind of configuration that will take. And we need to understand that if Putin isn't tried, if all war crimes are not properly, properly punished by all those who have committed them, if Russia is allowed to keep any of Ukrainian territory, we can shut the door on the United States and walk away. So the United Nations and walk away.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you. And that's I mean, we do see really this the extent to which, you know, a people whose territory is occupied. You know, are going to continue to fight. And I think, I think you see a lot of evidence of that. I'm going to end it in an unorthodox way. So I want to go through, if you can be brief and concise. So if you can be brief, I'm going to let each one of you put your questions so you can hear them. And you can have a one minute to to pick one thing to answer. But I'd like all your voices to go ahead. Yeah.
S15
Okay.
S24
I would like to have from one of you a proposal on a post-war financing framework for rebuilding Ukraine, such as Marshall Plan or Ebrd, or what would what would be a possible financing mechanism?
SPEAKER 6
Thanks. Thank you. Very good. Good example. Concise. Okay. There. Arthur.
S25
Yeah I so as it's been said, my name is Arthur. It's also a bit related to the question of Tom. You talked earlier about how some countries shifted their imports away from Ukraine into other countries, especially, for example, Russia, in terms of grains of food. I was wondering how it could, first of all, help Russia economically in the short term, but also hinder the long term reconstruction of Ukraine, for example, in terms of economics.
SPEAKER 6
Thank you. Switzerland.
S26
Thank you. Just a short question regarding the Russian leadership. Do you see that if the Russian leadership, as it currently stands, would change to the Liberal Party or Liberal opposition party, the war in Ukraine would end? Or if it's the Russian society who inherently supports the war. So there is no end to the war as it is right now, in case the leadership of the Russian society changes.
SPEAKER 6
Thank you. Yes.
S27
And I would just like to hear a few words on China. So considering they proposed a peace plan, but they've also refrained from condemning the invasion, they propped up the economy, increased trade by doubling trade. So would, I mean, would you say the peace plan, just some kind of liberal mimicking or what does China or Beijing actually want to get out of this war?
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you. And did I let all of you. Oh, one more here. Oh. Two more. Okay. There first and then here. And that's it.
S28
Hello I'm Karen from also development studies. We talked about we talked about Crimea first. But I also want to learn I also want to know what your thoughts about Donbas and its long term prospects are, because the ethnic makeup of the area is quite changed because of the war in the last decade or so. Two and is it a realistic chance that there can be any peace in that region, considering the civilian makeup?
SPEAKER 6
Thank you. And where did I see the last hand raised here? Can you bring the mic?
S29
So my name is Renata, and I'm studying global health policy here at LSC. I'm also from Ukraine, and I was wondering, so given how US and the West has been very, very supportive and very proactive in Israel, did that create any sort of tensions within Ukraine? And for Ukrainians, given how US are saying, oh, we might even end up sending troops there and all of the support that they're given to Israel, like, do Ukrainians feel that they did not receive that kind of support when they needed it?
S30
Okay. All right.
SPEAKER 6
Very brief. You can pick one thing to respond to each briefly, and then we'll continue afterwards informally. Thank you.
SPEAKER 9
Well, so my one thing is the first two questions. I think the best framework would be a collective framework involving the EU, the world Bank, the UN. As a coordinators. It needs to start before the war ends. Actually, it needs to be economic support for reconstruction and sustaining, you know, the economy starting from now. And it needs to be much more grant than loan, because I think Ukraine's getting to the point where it can no longer service an ever growing debt.
UNKNOWN
Thank you. Well.
SPEAKER 8
I think the bar for the ending ending of the conflict is raised so high that no Russian leadership, however moderate or progressive, would be able to go along with these conditions. So I would say that the prospects are for the continuation of military confrontation. And then after maybe a few years, they will appear, maybe softening of positions of both sides. But I do not see it with the kind of mutually exclusive demands being pursued.
SPEAKER 6
Okay. Thank you. All.
SPEAKER 7
Right. So on the first question, because this is something I'm involved in a lot, actually, I'm working on this to work on top of what you already said. Yes, they need to be this coordinated platform and they've already a lot of commitments. And there is a coordinated path from being developed on top of that that there has to be lesson taken from Marshall Plan. But also what Ukraine needs is a developmental state, because without relaxation of fiscal austerity and without a proper coordinated role of the state, especially we don't we do not know when the war is over. Liquidation phase of rebuilding is happening now and lots is ongoing now. Private investors don't go in war torn countries. It's through state procurement that a lot of work is being done. So generally, the revision of the role of the state is extremely important. And that is important. And developmental banks as well. And that is also something that we heard about during the World Economic Forum. But re enlivening of the new international economic order narrative of transforming the role of developmental banks, getting rid of odious debt that is actually compromising governments abilities to support basic needs of their population and aid. Yeah, and kind of like prioritising survival on the planet and recovery needs. And one one thing I'll say about Don Bosco, I think it's very important. To southern 14 war and now current war a different ilk ethnic composition. Well, a lot of people fled and like calling, calling those who went to Russia refugees is not, strictly speaking, correct because they were forcefully removed people or forced to move. So, for example, relatives of state administrators were put on buses with children a couple of weeks before the invasion started. So that and shipped to Russia with only passports and small.