German leaders gather in Berlin for Ukraine's Marshall”

National leaders, development experts gather in Berlin this Tuesday for a conference on what its hosts describe as a “Plan Marshall” to rebuild Ukraine after Russia's invasion.

The conference, organised by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the European Commission, will not include concrete promises of the estimated 750 billion-euro cost of reconstruction -- a task host compared to the United States' Marshall Aydeen program for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II, writes Euronews, broadcast Klaankos.tv.

Vladimir Putin's decision to launch a full invasion of Ukraine in February has resulted in thousands of deaths and destruction of homes and factories. While the war has been condemned as illegal by most in the West, Moscow still describes it as a <x0 military special operation” to free its neighbour from neo-Nazi extremists.

“The reconstruction power will shape the kind of country that will be Ukraine in the future,” writes Scholz and the president of the Ursula Commission von der Leen in Monday's edition of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemen.

“A law-run state with strong institutions? A capable and modern economy? A living democracy that belongs to Europe? While we should always be careful with historical comparisons, this is not less than a Marshall plan for the 21” century, they wrote, viewing Ukraine's reconstruction as a “work generation”.

Speaking at a business forum, Scholz expressed Germany's wishes that Ukraine could become a member of the European Union, a fact that donors must take into account when faced with the huge sums that reconstruction would cost.

Putin's “War has united our countries,”, he said at the forum.