It is essential to have continued top-level meetings and conferences on Ukraine's reconstruction and a path forward to peace. This is according to the head of the UN's development agency, UNDP, Achim Steiner, during a visit to Sweden.
They make an enormous difference, he tells TT during a visit to Sweden.
These are meeting-intensive days with a focus on Ukraine right now. An international reconstruction conference in Berlin has just concluded. A G7 meeting in Italy where a decision was made to lend frozen Russian assets to Ukraine has been taken. And a peace conference with over 100 participating countries and organisations in Switzerland at the weekend.
Achim Steiner, who, in addition to being the head of the UN's development agency UNDP, is also the third-highest-ranking official in the UN, tells TT that the conferences make a significant difference for Ukraine.
If you ask a Ukrainian, anyone, they make an enormous difference. It is a country that is currently living through its worst trauma. The great support makes all the difference between holding on and giving up. It is incredibly important from a Ukrainian perspective.
Good initiatives
The meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, is an initiative of Ukraine and Switzerland. A good initiative, according to Steiner, who reiterates what the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said on many occasions:
All parties must find a way forward to end the war.
Several of the leaders invited have chosen not to attend, including the presidents of the USA and China, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has been critical of Biden's decision not to attend and has drawn a parallel between the president's absence and "personally applauding" Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Instead, it will be the USA's Vice President Kamala Harris who represents her country at the meeting.
Zelensky and Biden have, after the criticism of Biden's absence, instead met at, among other things, the G7 meeting.
"It's about people"
Another important reason to continue meeting, talking about, and supporting Ukraine is spelled out in simple terms: people, according to Steiner.
Many countries are asking themselves how long they can continue to support Ukraine, but it's about real lives.
To say it's about Ukraine, Russia, or the West, that's abstract. But this is about people, says Achim Steiner.
