 Thank you so much. Okay, we'll go ahead and get started. Good afternoon and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center's briefing on strengthening partnerships update on Ukraine's economic recovery. My name is Doris Robinson and I am the briefing moderator. As a reminder, this briefing is on the record. We will post a transcript later today at fpc.state.gov. For journalists joining on Zoom, please make sure that your name and media outlet is in your chat window. And now I will introduce our briefer. Our briefer today is Penny Pritzer, US Special Representative for Ukraine's Economic Recovery. She will start us off with opening remarks and then after that we will take your questions over to you. Great, thank you and good afternoon everyone. I just got back from two trips to Ukraine over the last two weeks. The feeling on the ground has changed remarkably even since my last trip in January. There are real consequences to our failure to get Ukraine the assistance that it needs. Vladimir Putin is attacking Ukraine's energy system, hitting thermal and hydropower generation facilities, substations and transmission and distribution networks, leaving hundreds of thousands without power. Ukraine is losing ground on the battlefield because of the congressional inaction and every single day is only further emboldening Putin's aggression. This is a critical week on the Hill. Let me be clear, 784 days into Russia's full-scale invasion, the House must act to provide the crucial security, economic and humanitarian lifeline that Ukraine needs. And they must act now. The American people support Ukraine and we cannot abandon them in their time of need. We must also stay united and coordinated with our G7, European and other partners through this challenging period. On my trip to Kiev last week, the Multidoner Coordination Platform or MDCP held its first steering committee meeting there since the war. This group is a testament to what the international donor community is able to do when it collaborates. I'm proud to say that with our efforts, the MDCP is on track to launch a business advisory council at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin in June. In order to defeat Putin, it is not only going to take a sustained commitment from governments but also increased private sector engagement like a business advisory council to be more agile and responsive to the complex and rapidly changing environment in Ukraine. I also wanna underline that supporting Ukraine is a vital interest for both the United States and its allies. Ukrainians are fighting bravely to protect not only their sovereign and territorial integrity, but the European Atlantic system of democracy and the very values that allowed the US and Europe to live in freedom and prosper. The threat from Putin does not end at Ukraine's borders. He has said as much. Part of Putin's war strategy is to try and destroy Ukraine's economy. Since my appointment as special representative for Ukraine's economic recovery by President Biden, I've been working with the Ukrainians, our allies and other partners, as well as the private sector to strengthen the enabling environment for private sector investment and working across key sectors to boost Ukraine's economy now. Why now? Because a functioning Ukrainian economy is both key to its war effort and to it's achieving its Euro-Atlantic goals. I'm pleased to say the Ukrainian economy, just like its military, remains alive, active and resilient. The GDP is expected to grow at around 4% in 2024 after 5% growth last year. State revenue increased 25% in January 2024 over the previous year. And 2023 saw investment up 17% with over 37,000 new businesses registered in Ukraine, more than half founded by women. Such results do not just happen. They're the result of close collaboration and partnership across governments, international financial institutions, NGOs, the private sector and more. I just arrived yesterday from Chicago where Prime Minister Schmihal and I met with a diverse group of Chicago and Midwest business sector leaders. We want to work together across key sectors to mobilize investment, leverage private sector expertise and accelerate Ukraine's economic transformation. It is not going to be easy, but we are already seeing positive impacts now. From agricultural producers like ADM and Cargo that are continuing to support Ukrainian farmers to insurance brokers like Marsh and Aion that are providing war risk insurance and insurance for hull insurance. The American private sector has played a key role in the Black Sea miracle, allowing nearly 1,400 ships to export around 40 million tons of goods to 40 countries through the humanitarian corridor. American tech companies from Google to Cisco to IBM have been a part of Ukraine's growing tech sector at every level through cloud services, data analytics, digital upskilling and hardware provisions. And while I was in Kiev last week, we were proud to announce a $156 million deal to provide 40 diesel locomotives for Ukraine's national railway, UZ and its 200,000 iron people. That deal was enabled by the Ex-Im Bank financing, the first such deal since the full-scale invasion. The private sector will be a key underwriter of Ukraine's economic recovery, but security and economic recovery are intertwined. The Ukrainians desperately need more air defenses and interceptors to protect their people and critical infrastructure against Russian missiles and Iranian-supplied drones. General Cavalli got it right in his hearing last week when he said, and I quote, if one side can shoot and the other side can't shoot back, the side that can't shoot back loses. The house must pass the supplemental. We simply cannot delay any further. And with that, I'm happy to take your questions. Thank you, special representative. We'll start the question and answer session now. We'll start taking questions in the room. Please raise your hand and wait for me to call on you and please state your name and your media outlet. And let's go here to Alex. Thanks so much, Lars. But, Madam Special Member, thank you so much for your time. If you say a bus put Ukraine damage, and you say, Alex Raffoldo from the Crown News Agency, if you say a bus put Ukraine damage into numbers, used to be, I mean, fellas, we heard that a couple of months ago was a current number by your calculation. And you also said this morning that Ukrainians are ready to drive their country from economic resilience to recovery. The bus decoded a little bit. What did you mean by that? Thanks so much. Well, first of all, the estimates of damage are getting close to $500 billion. I think the number the World Bank uses is $486 billion of estimated damage to Ukraine's infrastructure, residential buildings, businesses, schools, cultural facilities. And now also, and on top of that, the most recent damage that's been done to the energy infrastructure, I'm sure will raise those numbers. I mean, in terms of going from resilience to recovery to renaissance, really what I was talking about is the notion that with security, Ukraine has every right to be able to not only just recover, but also build into a thriving Euro-Atlantic-oriented country that has the potential to provide goods and services to the global markets. And what I meant by that was, if you think about the six sectors of the economy that we're working on with the Ukrainian government, whether it's ag or it's critical minerals, mining or steel, or it's energy or defense production, or technology, in each of these sectors, Ukraine has the talent, the ingenuity, the capability, and frankly the track record to be successful and to provide those products and services to the global markets. Where this morning, we had a meeting with a number of businesses, including in the infrastructure area, where businesses are saying there's a shortage of capacity around the world, in general, to solve the problems that are arising all over the world. Ukraine has talented people. It has well-trained people. It has natural resources. It has a really well-developed tech services sector. So there's no end and it's applying all of these capabilities right now, not just in business or in commerce, but also in war. And out of that pressure of war comes ingenuity. And so I think that that's what I meant by renaissance. There's an opportunity for the country to emerge from this terrible situation much, much stronger and really being a vibrant contributor to the global economy. Thank you for that. Let's take our next question online. Let's go to Dmitro Anapochinko from InterTV Ukraine. Dmitro, go ahead and unmute yourself and turn on your camera if you would like. Oh, thank you very much, Dmitro Anapochinko, Ukraine and you as correspondent. Thank you for taking my question. Ma'am, I'm really interested in your vision of how to use the Russian money frozen in the United States. And to, you possibly know better than me that there are different ways. I spoke to World Bank ex-president Robert Zelik and his idea and I know that there are a lot of supporters that those money have to be given to Ukraine right now. Even we should not wait until the end of the war. You definitely heard about the congressional idea to use those money as a loan guarantee. So I'm really interested in your vision. What is the best way to use that money to help Ukraine, to support Ukraine? Thank you. Thank you. I think that first, Russia has to pay for the damage that it's caused. And as we were just discussing, that damage is now estimated to be over $486 billion according to the World Bank. And that damage is not only to the energy sector but also to other infrastructure, to residential buildings, businesses, schools and cultural facilities. And the G7 partners have looked at various mechanisms to take action to utilize the $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets. And as Secretary Yellen has said, it's necessary and urgent for our coalition to find a way to unlock this value of these immobilized assets to support Ukraine's continued resistance and long-term reconstruction. So to me, first of all, we are in active discussions with the G7 and I think those discussions are making great progress to come up with an exact structure of how to use at a minimum a portion of those assets at this time. And that is, I believe, essential in order to provide critical support needed to begin to address this hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of damage that's been done. And the need is urgent, as you know. What types of things should those assets be used for? I believe it should be used for reconstruction and building the future and making this notion of resilience to recovery to renaissance a reality. Thank you. We'll take another question from the room, I believe. Let's go to Italy here. Yes, yes, the answer to the question was mine, but as we should another question, I would like to ask you, which are the priorities? Can you say your name? Yeah, sorry, Alberto Simone from La Stampa, Italy. Which are the priorities in your reconstructions project because you said energy has been destroyed also subways, schools. So would you have at least a place to start with? So one of the things that we're doing is working with the Ukrainian government to begin to develop, let's call it a set of priorities for reconstruction. And what we've proposed and are in the process of having conversations about is really what we're calling pre-project planning, which is really there needs to be, if you take the six sectors that I talked about as areas of opportunity, what do you do first? Where do you focus? How do you make sure that the resources are used effectively and efficiently? That's right now. There's an agreement of which sectors, but now there's a question of how do you prioritize and who participates? Frankly, from everything that I've heard from the private sector, there isn't enough private sector capacity or government capacity to do everything at once. And so there's a need to figure out if you're going to, for example, hook your energy system into the West, which the grid is now, parts of it are interlinked with the European grid, which in fact is a big part of help that's going on right now under the current situation that's been threatened, the energy situation that's been threatened by Russia. Now one has to figure out, okay, we know that's true. Where, you know, what kind of systems do we want to have? What, how decentralized, where to focus? And I'll just take, for example, energy, you know, it's they've have too much of their generation is centralized and that's made it vulnerable to Russian attack. Modern systems are more decentralized and definitely greener. That's an aspiration of the Ukrainian government, but how do we go from that aspiration to actual projects? That requires pre-project planning and we're now working with some of the largest companies in the world and it's, and to advise Ukraine as to how they might then begin to execute on, that's just energy. Then you can imagine rail or roads, systems, bridges and other types of infrastructure that, and then you can imagine a need for additional schools and housing, et cetera, as more and more of their refugees return, which they do. I was in Bucharest in the last 10 days and met with a group of refugees. 93% of the refugees in Romania want to go back to Ukraine. Many of them are women with children. They're grateful to the Romanians, but they would like to ultimately return home. That's gonna mean there's a need for more schools, more housing, et cetera. And so how does one proceed in an efficient manner? There are, and this is where a public-private partnership will need to exist, to do the planning and this is where governments and NGOs can come in and this is not just the US. It will also involve European companies, Japanese companies, et cetera, our allies that are all participating who want to participate in the reconstruction. And then the question is, how do you do the logistics so you don't end up with a situation where you run out of either steel or you run out of concrete or you don't. So all of that is the kind of work that should start now. Thank you. Let's go here. Thank you for your time today. So, Taliya Rose from Yom Yom Yom Yom Yom Yom. How would you evaluate partner countries' efforts in supporting Ukraine's recovery specifically with regards to Japan as well? Thank you. How would I evaluate them? Yes. Well, I think that there will be, it will be up to the Ukrainian government to figure out the prioritization and then my, I suspect what they will do is then ultimately run RFPs and be matching countries or excuse me, companies that are desirous of providing services or construction or other things with various projects and those will be evaluated on the specifics of those projects. There are companies from all of the partner countries in the MDCP who have the capacity to contribute to the reconstruction of Ukraine. And frankly, we're helping the Ukrainians to figure out how to access all of that because it's all gonna be needed. Thank you. And we have time for one last question. Let's go here. Thanks, I'm Margaret Johnson with Radiant for Europe. Question is if you would be able to just elaborate a little bit on what you said in your opening remark about an announcement that's coming in June in Berlin. Is that, could you elaborate on that? Let us explain if that's a new development and how it fits in with some of the partner countries that you've already mentioned. Sure, so a big opportunity is the Berlin Ukraine. It's called the Ukraine Recovery Conference. It's being hosted by Germany in Berlin in June. It's an opportunity for the Ukrainians to showcase their progress, let's say on reforms, their opportunities in terms of the various sectors. It's an opportunity for all the partner countries to talk about what kind of support they've got available. It's an opportunity for the private sector to showcase what it can bring to the table. And so the Ukraine Recovery Conference, I think has the potential to be an important moment in both envisioning and bringing to reality some of the future ideas about Ukraine's recovery and reconstruction. And we do have one last question. A journalist just emailed, will President Biden participate in the Ukraine Peace Summit in Switzerland? I'm sorry. I didn't know that. I'm sorry. Will President Biden participate in the Ukraine Peace Summit in Switzerland? I really have no idea whether he'll participate. My guess is though, the American, I was participated in the one in January and my guess is there will for sure be American representation. But I have no idea whether he personally will participate. But that doesn't mean President Biden has been absolutely clear in his support for Ukraine. And that is unwavering. And he in fact is, I think has his pen out and is waiting to sign a bill from Congress, the supplemental, which I'm very hopeful that, since we've gotten, the supplemental now has been introduced in the House, which is a good sign. And we know that the speaker has said that he wants to have a vote before the weekend leadership has said that they wanna have a vote by this weekend. And I'm gonna take them at their word. So I'm hopeful that we'll have things to talk about shortly because once that supplemental passes, I think that, I mean, the situation has been quite dire. And I think that Ukraine is very much has been quite clear. They are definitely need our support and our military support as well. So I'm hopeful about that. Thank you so much. This concludes the question and answer portion of today's briefing. I would like to thank very much special representative Pritzker for taking the time to brief us today, as well as to the journalists for joining us today. This concludes today's briefing. Thank you all. Thank you.