Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest donates $750m to Ukraine’s ‘green’ fund to help rebuild the worn-torn country
Australian billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest will give nearly $750m to Ukraine to kickstart the war-torn country’s rebuild and replace “Russian rubbish”.
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Mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest is giving almost $750m ($US500m) to war-torn Ukraine to kickstart a $US25b “Green Growth Initiative” backed by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The major rebuilding plan is being touted by President Zelensky as delivering “the world’s first green digital economy” and focuses on rebuilding energy, communications and other infrastructure.
The fund, which is expected to grow to $US100b ($148bn), was kickstarted when Dr Forrest visited Kyiv in June – when he presented Mr Zelensky with an R.M. Williams stock whip.
Announcing the plan to a Singapore economic forum, Mr Zelenskyy said he and Dr Forrest had agreed “we will not replace communist-era, rubbish Russian infrastructure” but would “leapfrog to the latest technology”.
“We will take advantage of the fact that what the Russians have destroyed can readily be replaced with the latest, most modern, green and digital infrastructure,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
“The whole world can see how Russia, unable to win on the battlefield, terrorises civil infrastructure. The price of reconstruction is growing with each new strike.
“One day the aggressor will pay for everything in full, but our people cannot wait for electricity and heat for months. We need to restore Ukraine now. That is why this project is so timely.”
The Ukraine Green Growth Initiative will work with the global investment community on Ukraine’s rapid post-war reconstruction.
The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, last week inked a deal to help develop a platform to attract private capital for Ukraine’s recovery and to support the beleaguered nation’s economy.
Dr Forrest, who made the investment with wife Nicola through their Tattarang Group, said the fund’s aim was to “help to step beyond the wire lines of the past and accelerate digital communications development”.
“The $US25b ($37bn) Ukraine Green Growth Initiative will be the home of professional and sovereign investment with the aim of helping rebuild Ukraine in one generation, whilst delivering returns to investors,” he said.
“I invite professional investors, fund managers and sovereign funds and all who believe invading another country should now be forever consigned to the historical garbage bin of humanity’s worst mistakes, to join us.”
The strategy was agreed when Dr Forrest spent almost a week in Ukraine in June, meeting cabinet members including Mr Zelenskyy, to whom he presented the R.M. Williams whip and a book of photographs from his Minderoo Station, in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
An OECD policy response released in July said Ukraine’s post-war “green” reconstruction “should not be seen as a desirable but optional extra, but as an economic necessity for a fundamental transformation of Ukraine towards a green and net-zero economy”.
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