BERLIN: Ukraine and its allies drummed up support to protect Ukrainian cities from Russian missiles at a conference in Berlin on Tuesday and urged international businesses to put their faith, and billions of dollars, into post-war reconstruction. Kyiv hopes the recovery conference will cement its credentials as a future member of the European Union that is worthy of huge injections of reconstruction financing - even as Russian forces continue to make slow advances in Ukraine’s east.

Switzerland hosts an international conference this weekend to seek a path to peace in Ukraine, but it has been shunned by China and dismissed as a waste of time by Russia, which was not invited to attend. Speaking alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had already wiped out enough energy infrastructure to power the cities of Berlin and Munich combined.

He was hoping to come away from the conference with pledges of billions of euros for defense and agreements on building a new and more modern energy system. “Ukraine is suffering from the most destructive form of the Russian view of energy as a weapon,” Zelensky said. Citing World Bank estimates that Ukraine could need $500 billion over a decade, Scholz said companies had to be offered a business case for investing, and talked up Ukraine’s potential in sectors including renewables, IT and pharmaceuticals.

He also said Germany was sending more air defense systems to bolster Ukraine’s defenses against a barrage of Russian attacks on cities and critical infrastructure, more than two years after Russia launched a full-scale invasion. “The best kind of reconstruction is the one that doesn’t have to happen at all,” he said. A Russian campaign of aerial bombardment that began in March has inflicted such heavy damage to generating capacity that blackouts are having to be scheduled across Ukraine. A flurry of diplomacy will have both Zelensky and Scholz attending a summit of the Group of Seven major Western powers in Italy this week.

AfD boycott

In a Reuters interview at the conference, the mayor of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, said Western weapons and the permission to use them to strike targets just inside Russia had helped to restore calm. Zelensky also addressed the German parliament during his visit, where his speech was boycotted by two parties including the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose support surged in European elections last weekend.

Zelensky warned that the pro-Kremlin parties’ stance posed a threat that stretched beyond Ukraine. “It seems to me that the most important thing is that people did not choose pro-Russian populist rhetoric. But radical pro-Russian rhetoric is dangerous for your countries,” Zelensky warned.

The co-leaders of the AfD said they “refused to listen to a speaker wearing camouflage fatigues”. “Ukraine does not need a war president now, it needs a peace president who is ready to negotiate,” said Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, adding that AfD MPs had therefore decided to leave their seats empty at the Bundestag on Tuesday.

Speaking alongside Scholz and Zelensky, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced agreements with banks worth 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) to help attract private investment for Ukraine. She also said the EU would deliver 1.9 billion euros to Ukraine from its own assistance program by the end of the month, and that Kyiv would benefit from interest income from frozen Russian assets. “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin must fail, and Ukraine must prevail,” she said. “And we must help Ukraine to rise from the ashes and to be the master of its own future. This means, first and foremost, that we must provide Ukraine with the means to defend itself.” — Agencies