Disaster capitalism in Ukraine

How the West is using the war to open up Ukraine to Western capital, and plunder its resources

On June 21-22, thousands of representatives from Western governments and businesses gathered in London for the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC23). Officially, the meeting’s purpose was to “support Ukraine’s recovery”. But a closer look reveals that Western corporate elites convened in the British capital for somewhat less altruistic reasons: namely, to stake their claims to the massive profit opportunities being created by the war. This becomes apparent when one considers that last year the Ukrainian government essentially outsourced the entire post-war “reconstruction” process to BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm. In February, J.P. Morgan was brought on board as well. The two banks will run the Ukraine Development Fund, which aims to raise private investment in projects potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars across sectors including tech, natural resources, agriculture and health. The opportunities are significant, particularly in the agricultural sector: Ukraine is home to a quarter of the world’s chernozem (“black earth”), an extraordinarily fertile soil, and before the war it was world’s top producer of sunflower meal, oil and seed, and one of the biggest exporters of corn and wheat. From certain perspectives, the war is clearly good for business: indeed, the greater the destruction, the greater the opportunities for reconstruction. At Davos this year, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, said he hoped the initiative would turn the country into a “beacon of capitalism”. Read the rest of the article here.

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