Virtual
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: There is so much that USAID is doing right now in Ukraine that I think the broad majority of people, even who are following Ukraine, are, excuse me, unaware of. And so, just to give you a flavor of this, of course, there is an acute humanitarian need and has been from February 24th last year, the displacement – the mass displacement that occurred.
A lot of focus is on the number of Ukrainians who flowed into Europe. I myself was at the border a few days after the conflict started, and these harrowing scenes of mothers with their children, the men, you know, being left behind or staying behind in order to be part of the fight, and of course, the welcome, by and large, that those refugees have received across Europe and here in the United States, which is a good thing. But also, you know, it is an expensive proposition that almost inevitably affects humanitarian assistance budgets, development budgets, for our colleagues in Europe, for our counterparts basically. And so, you now see a lot of pressure on aid budgets across the board, not only because, but in part because of the toll of Ukrainians coming across and because of the generosity of that welcome.
USAID's work is mainly inside Ukraine, so if people are displaced or if they've suffered, for example sexual violence, which has been a tactic of war by the Russian forces in places that they've occupied or where they've been able to take over territory even if temporarily – in some cases, you know, that psychosocial support, temporary housing for those whose houses have been destroyed -- so, that's under the humanitarian umbrella. And I think, Halie, in your introduction, you were describing the vast sums of resources that we have expended in Ukraine. But only a very small share, actually, under 10 percent of what the taxpayer has empowered us to do is in that acute humanitarian phase – notwithstanding the acute humanitarian needs. I think we're meeting them with our partners.
But the vast majority of what we're doing is what we call, kind of, the other front in the war. And that is keeping the government's lights on. They have a huge budget deficit, five billion dollars a month, roughly. And USAID is providing – this is very unusual for us – but thanks to Congress, providing direct budget support so that the Ukrainian government itself can actually pay firefighters and first responders, pay health workers, pay teachers, make sure that pensioners still have a means of living. Even if they haven't been displaced, they still need some way of getting access to some kind of check each month, as would happen in this country too, if we were in this situation. So, direct budget support is a very, very significant component of USAID's work.
Wonderfully, the European Union, actually, at the tail end of last year, after some kind of halting infusions – you know, where some months it was on; some months it was off – now itself has actually matched us as well for this calendar year in providing roughly $1.5 billion a month in order to deal with those kind of basic expenses – because, again, imagine the scenario. If you're providing state-of-the-art weapons systems, and Leopard tanks, and the like, and yet your, you know, your fire brigades are no longer functioning, or your government ministry doesn't have enough money to keep a generator powered, or worse a surgeon who is carrying out surgery doesn't have that backup generator for when Russia strikes. Well, that generator costs money. That fuel costs money. So, that's a piece of it.
The other thing is, and I am going on because I think a lot of this work Americans find, you know, very, very interesting – and again, it's not that well-known – is on the energy sector. Putin made a strategic choice, heading into the winter, that he was going to systematically target critical infrastructure and try to take the heat out, try to take the lights out. Basically, to weaponize winter.
And we, at a strategic level as an administration came together, and decided, "Okay, well, we're going to try to stop him and prevent him from weaponizing winter," and it's too soon to declare that mission successful but certainly, the programming has been effective. And that is everything, Halie, from providing, you know, thousands of generators – I think we're close to 3,000 generators we've provided now – auto transformers, mobile substations, mobile power stations, which are, you know, kind of generators on steroids that can power – in one instance, one delivery was, I think, 100,000 households were going to be powered by a USAID delivery of this nature. The steel pipes, you know, when those pipes get destroyed, us going and working with our friends internationally to procure. I think we're at 70 kilometers worth of steel pipes to replace those that Putin's forces are taking out. So, I think the energy sector is an important area to highlight.
And then, there's much else to say, but the last area I would highlight and if anybody wants to ask a question on any other domain, I am happy to take it – but it's actually in, when you hear about direct budget support and, you know about Ukraine's track record when it comes to corruption and how challenging that has been. You might say, "Oh, my gosh. Direct budget support to the government." But, we have kept right along supporting the independent institutions in the Ukrainian system, everything from the special prosecutor for corruption – which includes corruption crimes, as well as now taking on in the prosecutor general's office, taking on war crimes prosecutions as well – which, you're going to see, it also supports the documentation of war crimes.
But the civil society organizations, the major ones that are actually tracking not only whether there's corruption in the dispersal of aid, which, of course some of that has surfaced – and that's in part because of investigative journalists who USAID had funded – this independent media organization raised the red flag. And then these institutions within the Ukrainian government, the anti-corruption institutions, kick in and begin to impose oversight. We've just launched a new project toward the end of the year that I am particularly enthused about, which is with their supreme audit institution. USAID’s partnering with GAO to actually strengthen, during the war, the auditing capabilities of Ukrainian institutions.
And then, while there are USAID programs in trying to deepen judicial integrity, that judges have asset disclosures and things like that online, for the Parliament, as well as for people who work within the executive. Again, it's not enough to rely on those internal institutional developments and reforms that USAID had been supporting. I mean, we've been active in Ukraine in 1992, but really supporting in earnest since the Maidan Revolution. But it's, again, the outsiders, the civil society groups, the media, and others who will be crying foul if some of those institutions, you know, lapse or fall down on the job.
So, I mentioned that because I think it's sort of amazing, when you think about it. Imagine growing your democracy, strengthening your institutions at the same time, you know, passing through the Rada procurement reforms, asset disclosure laws, you know, the next phase of judicial reform – doing all of that democracy-building work at the same time Putin is pulverizing your cities and your communities, you know, with missiles and atrocities for those towns, again, that have come under Russian control. And that is the importance of looking at U.S. support for this effort on both fronts.
And it's one reason, again, that work on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, in sustaining the constituency to support Ukraine, it's really important to sustain support on both of these fronts. Because, again, to do the counterfactual – what would happen if you actually, on the home front, if the lights had gone out? If people had frozen to death over the course of a winter? If those anti-corruption institutions were not functioning or developing at the same time as the war? Well, what would that mean for security assistance? And the checks and balances, actually, even on the weapons systems, and whether, you know, we can work to strengthen systems even alongside getting the weapons to the front line – you know, which is what other agencies or U.S. government agencies are working to do.
So, that's a taste of it. You know, it adds up. As you said, it’s, I think, more than $15 billion now in overall assistance, but it runs the gamut. And even our, you know, programs on getting COVID vaccine shots into arms, enhancing surgical care, making sure that every hospital, again, has a generator – a backup generator. Every sector of the Ukrainian economy USAID had worked in before this latest round of the war commenced on February 24th, and now, thanks to these supplemental bills that have passed through Congress, we've actually been able to increase our work in these institutional domains, or in these very specific economic sectors. And it's been – it's going to put Ukraine, Ukraine gets through the war and when it gets through the war and when it emerges, it's going to be much more integrated into Europe and have much more resilience built in as a design feature everything from its cybersecurity, to its energy, to its agriculture, ironically, than it did before Putin invaded in the first place. But getting through the war, of course, is the challenge on hand right now, as Mike was speaking to.
HALIE SOIFER: Well, thanks to you and everyone at USAID for this remarkably important effort that is ongoing. Something that so many, including myself, deeply admire about you, Administrator Power, is your commitment to engaging with, educating, and imparting knowledge and humanitarian values on the next generation of leaders. And with that in mind, I am going to turn this over now to a few younger members of the JDCA community to ask you a few questions. So, our first question will be asked by JDCA's outreach and program manager, Alan Shulman , a recent graduate of Michigan State University and a first-generation American whose family emigrated from the Soviet Union. Over to you, Alan.
ALAN SHULMAN: Thank you so much, Halie. And it's such an honor to be on the JDCA team with you. Administrator Power, I just want to start by expressing my profound gratitude to you for everything you and USAID have done for the Ukrainian people in the face of this invasion by Vladimir Putin. You recently referred to the Russian invasion as a campaign of destruction. You touched on this in a bit in your first answer, but could you please speak a little more about the humanitarian impact of Russia's ongoing attacks in Ukraine, specifically as it relates to Ukrainians who have been uprooted, displaced, and forced to flee as refugees, like my family did from the Soviet Union over 30 years ago.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you so much. Well, let me start by just talking briefly about something I touched upon just at the end of my previous response, which is the mass atrocities. Because sometimes, when we talk about humanitarian impact, we can think of it only as you know, maybe not, but this isn't only, but as displacement or as you know, as food needs, and so forth, all of which I'll come back to. But I do think that, you know, part of the strategy, as you know, in your question, this sort of campaign of destruction does really, at least what the forces are doing out in the field, Russian forces are doing when they are in positions to occupy, and whether that's Katarrhalis [spelled phonetically] forces, or Wagner forces or conventional Russian forces – is you're seeing executions of civilians. Executions of prisoners of war, you know, prisoners who've been taken, have their hands tied, you know, some of the mass graves that have been unearthed, you know, as territory has come back into Ukrainian hands. And, you know, it's tempting to see Putin at his long table, you know, there in Russia and think somehow that this impunity that he feels right now is a permanent condition.
You know, there's, of course, accountability through sanctions and other things, but fundamentally accountability for any war crimes committed is fundamental. And so, because the toll of this war is being felt not only on the battlefield by brave Ukrainian soldiers who are putting their lives on the line. And that is itself, again, because this is a war of choice by Putin, a terrible, terrible human toll, but also, again, these attacks on civilians. So, these crimes carried out in occupation, the brutality of attacks on maternity wards, and civilian infrastructure. All of that has to be documented now. Because the truth is, we don't have any way of predicting exactly, not only how this will – would end precisely, and the way that Ambassador McFaul was speaking to.
But also, if you look at any of the areas where you have seen, actually courtroom accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, you know, I think none of those circumstances at the height of the war would you have guessed that the perpetrators of atrocities would end up being held accountable. And I say this as somebody who started my career, as Halie alluded to, in the former Yugoslavia where these guys Milosevic, and Karadžić, and Mladić, you know, the political leadership, the generals strutting around, you know, feeling as if they would never be held to account, just feeling such impunity. But that record was established, the documentation was done, and then eventually, all three of them found themselves in the Hague.
And so, right now, USAID, as I alluded to, is supporting the documentation of war crimes. We’ve, I think at this point, documented – the organizations we partner with – have documented more than 30,000 alleged war crimes, working, of course, with Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice as well. But you know, those institutions, again, are being – the airplane is being in this case not so much built as it is being flown, but amended. Because we had invested actually in the documentation of atrocities in Crimea, and in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, before Putin carried out the full-scale invasion, starting in February of last year. So, we had a program that was already underway. But the scale of atrocities causing this dire humanitarian impact, of course, has expanded dramatically.
In terms of the more traditional understanding of humanitarian impact, which might have been what you meant, again, I'd said, I think, very, very impressive response by European nations to the influx. Ukrainian kids now are welcomed into schools, whether in Poland, in Germany. I've been, a couple times, to Moldova since the conflict started – they are actually a very small country itself partially occupied by Russian forces, very vulnerable to Russian energy blackmail. And yet, actually, had more Ukrainians passing through per capita than any other country in Europe. It's important to sustain that. At the same time, what you are seeing as well is a desire for Ukrainians to go home to those areas that are not on the front lines, or that are sufficiently removed from the front lines – that parents feel they can safely bring their kids back, because that's mainly what you saw coming into Europe are families. But again, I really credit the national governments and the publics in those European nations that have extended the welcome mat, giving full access to social services, including schooling.
And then lastly, inside Ukraine, I think, we have large international organizations that we're working through, like the World Food Programme, for example, that's a key partner for us. And they are reaching millions of Ukrainians each month. Mainly, actually, with cash assistance. Because as is true in many parts of the world now, not only do the recipients prefer cash because they actually, you know, it's in accordance with their freedom of choice, with their dignity, how they would wish to spend cash, how they would wish to allocate that rather than getting some sack of wheat or something in Ukraine, you know, cash is proving the best way for food, shelter and other purposes. But it also gets the Ukrainian economy geared up in a way that we really needed to.
And one of the advantages of Ukrainians coming home and resuming work in Ukraine is that is also increasing the tax base. So, what I didn't mention in my opening statement is that USAID is also supporting Ukrainian farmers with low interest loans, with new equipment to replace any equipment that Putin's forces have destroyed. And we have a whole new initiative supporting SMEs, small and medium sized enterprises, because getting the economy going, getting people back to work, you know, we have to guard against scenarios where this war drags on. And we guard against that by other agencies, of course, providing the necessary security assistance to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position for any negotiation. But we also guard against it by building in more resilience into the economy, and trying to get sectors that can still be very productive, like the agricultural sector, and actually, the tech sector to ensure that those economic sectors continue to deliver, continue to be a source of employment but also a source of tax revenue for the government so that these large infusions of direct budget support, hopefully, over time can be tapered or reduced somewhat, or those resources can be channeled into other domains.
MS. SOIFER: Great, thank you, Alan. Our next question will come from our outreach intern Becca Hammerman, a graduate student in public administration at GW. Becca?
REBECCA HAMMERMAN: Thank you so much, Halie, and thank you Administrator Power.
When you traveled to Ukraine in October, you visited a school that had been damaged by Russian missiles; what has been the impact of the war on women, children, and students who represent the next generation in Ukraine?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: I mean, thank you. I mean, first of all, one thing I will say about the COVID-19 sort of legacy is that Ukrainian students, like so many students globally, had become accustomed to learning online. And indeed, many schools – I was sort of surprised by this myself – but many schools in Ukraine had not gotten back to in person learning when Putin launched the full-scale invasion in February. And this is yet another reason why keeping the lights on – keeping the power going through the winter – was so important, it may well be another factor behind Putin's desire to take the lights out and to take electricity out. Because, of course, the more – if you're a parent, and your kid is not able to get access to electricity and schooling that way, then the more likely they are to go further afield into Europe.
I think in Putin's logic, the more people go into Europe, eventually European patience wears thin, in his account – although he's been proven wrong in all of his predictions. But, you know, he's counting on, creating difficulties for an alliance that has shown remarkable unity and endurance already in this now, you know, 13 month, almost, conflict – or phase of the conflict – I should say, since there was a conflict that predated 2022.
But this online learning has been a godsend, as has the heroism of Ukrainian teachers, who almost no matter their circumstances, in some cases from the bottom of subway stations or bomb shelters, which are basically – you mentioned the school that I visited, you know, what had been a school classroom but lower down was turned into a de facto bomb shelter for the neighborhood. And so parts of schools are actually being occupied as emergency shelters if they can accommodate people in that way. But from apartment basements, former, you know, what will be future school basements again, you know, [you have] teachers on their laptops.
You know, we all admired so much, teachers in the United States who continued teaching online, and found a way to do it in creative ways, when our kids here we're dealing with a pandemic. Imagine, as a parent, what it means to you – the lifeline – that Ukrainian teachers, and the spiritual lifeline that Ukrainian teachers are offering to young people. So, that's one aspect of it, I think, again, that's not maybe broadly understood is that most of the young people are continuing to learn online. Many Ukrainians who are in neighboring countries have actually chosen to maintain their relationships with their previous teachers and schools. While some, again, have invested themselves in learning new languages, and being part of the school system in the countries in which they now find themselves.
I think that the other thing that I would I guess point to, is I mentioned the crisis that has been inflicted by Russian forces on women who have found themselves in Russian occupied territory. We do a lot in that kind of psychosocial care, actually working with the First Lady of Ukraine, who has made mental health and the trauma of conflict – including sexual violence – a priority of hers. And so, that has been searing, to see the scale of atrocity, but very specifically, the use of rape as a weapon of war, including circumstances where young women, you know, have been kept in captivity by Russian soldiers, over a protracted period of time. And just devastating circumstances, which, you know, again, it'll be generations for any semblance of recovery.
Finally, I would just add – because you mentioned education and schooling – the importance of the private sector. One of the things we try to do at USAID is, you know, find partners who are eager to contribute at times like this. Sometimes there's an impulse among citizens, you know, to want to give things – things are actually hard to work with if you're USAID, because sometimes transporting them, let's say from the United States over to Ukraine, costs more than it might have to procure locally. And we want to get the Ukrainian economy, again, as close to approximating its pre-war self as possible. And so, cash is actually better generally. But that said, when Microsoft comes along and is willing to offer laptops to Ukrainian school-aged children, again, to continue this kind of learning, or private sector partners in other European countries do the same, that makes a world of difference. And so, we have really interesting partnerships that we've done, you know, with Visa in terms of the use of tech to deliver social services to Ukrainians. Microsoft, again, when it comes to tech education or using IT to make sure that there aren't huge gaps in learning, and I just encourage anybody who's plugged in with the private sector if they want to talk to USAID about what a private sector partnership could look like, that's an absolutely critical part of the solution now as well.
MS. SOIFER: Great, thank you, Becca. Our final question will come from JDCA programming and public engagement fellow David Naftulin, who is in his second year at GW law school. David.
DAVID NAFTULIN: Great, thank you very much, Halie. And thank you, Administrator Power, for all of your vital work and for taking the time to speak with us today. I wanted to ask you about the importance of journalism in a time like this. And of course, high quality journalism is never more important than during wartime. And as many people on this call may know there, as just one example, there are publications such as the Kyiv Independent, for example, which is providing really vital insights into the day-to-day realities of the situation, and in particular, how this war is taking a toll on ordinary civilians. And I wanted to ask you, if you could speak with us about the role that USAID has played in supporting journalists in Ukraine, and how these efforts have helped to shape public opinion, both in the U.S. and around the world?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: That's great. Thank you for the question, and I fully embrace the premise about the importance of this work, in so many respects. I gave an example earlier about a journalist who raised an initial flag that then led the sort of system, the system crackdown on corruption, that made headlines a month or two ago. That's, I think, one example of the work in training independent media that USAID has been a part of and the U.S. government as a whole has been a part of.
But what would get less attention, perhaps, is some of the reforms – the legislative reforms, and the regulatory reforms – that have made it easier for independent journalists to operate. Now, needless to say, as the country liberalizes, as Ukraine had been doing, posing of course a great threat to Putin in all respects. But you would expect, again, a more permissive environment for journalists to operate on. But actually, laws granting the public access to more information, sort of right to know information to allow journalists on the outside to be able to access information that had been obscured, and still where there'll be recalcitrant individuals who don't want to post their assets online or don't want to respond to requests from outside. I think that's an example as well of the kind of, you might call it enabling environment work. So, that enabling environment work with legislators, with civil society organizations that aren't just holding the government to account but are actually proposing constructively, what are the systemic changes that would be needed in order for journalists in the long term to be performing that work – I think that's been really important.
USAID was a major funder and influencer – I think it's fair to say – in the effort by Ukrainians as well, to create an effective public broadcasting institution. You all know in the United States how invaluable our public broadcasting has been. And helping establish its public service broadcaster, I think, has been incredibly important. We have, I think, in total supported since 2018, 53 local media support organizations you might call them, and more than 700 independent media outlets, through grants, training, and technical assistance.
And again, our goal is not to influence content in any way, but to work with journalists who may be pivoting into that career for the first time or may have been in the past. Or maybe, for example, now reporting on an active frontline situation on an active battlefront for the first time, you know, even to make sure that they have flak jackets and helmets. We've done a huge amount of provision of those kinds of resources in light of the fact that many journalists have had to repurpose or redirect their journalistic energy on war-related investigations or war related news information.
The very last thing I would say, maybe, is on disinformation, which I don't know if that came up with Ambassador McFaul, but of course, is a major feature of the battlefront as well in its own way. And you could imagine how powerful disinformation can be. We know Russia's capabilities in this domain. We live them, some of us every day on our Twitter feeds, the Russian trolls and the campaigns. But the disinformation campaigns that have even, of course, had a hand in our own democracy – not just as Twitter trolls – but in more strategic ways in recent years.
We, USAID, invested in a center, basically to combat disinformation, which is hybrid civil society and governmental. And I think they've been very good at naming the memes and documenting spikes in disinformation in particular domains, which can be a form of inoculation, you know, this idea of almost pre-budding. And Lord knows, again, the Russian Federation is investing vast resources in trying to win the war of information. But in addition to naming the bad and the lying, again, just to remember, always, that the flow of independent sources of news and making sure that those media outlets – also know how to go digital, that they know how to be viable. We have a media viability accelerator initiative at USAID that isn't just Ukraine-focused, but is on helping independent media outlets figure out how to operate in this really complicated business environment, that even local organizations – local independent media in the U.S. – have struggled to transition through.
So, we try to think of this media journalistic sector as an ecosystem where it wouldn't be enough just to train journalists or to give them flak jackets – no more than it would be enough to have, you know, great laws that were very permissive and that posted a politician's assets online – if you didn't have the journalists themselves. No more than all of that would be effective if a disinformation onslaught weakened morale, and undermined public support and solidarity, you know, again, as one component of the Russian Federation’s war approach. So, thinking systemically, I think is something that the Ukrainians have been remarkable at doing, and for us to fall in line and to find ways to strategically support these different ways of getting at the same challenge, which is the right to information and the right of free expression, and freedom of the press. Ultimately, that's a real privilege.
Actually, as a former journalist, to be at USAID, and to be able to be supportive of these incredibly brave people on the line who are thinking five steps ahead, not only what's the story of today, but structurally, what do we need to do as a society. And again, back to the point I made in my opening, that is going to make Ukraine just an incredibly vibrant and much more resilient democracy when this conflict is over. And remember, so many Ukrainians are thinking not just about winning this war, but getting into the European Union and being a model democracy. They recognize they have a long way to go, but I love this way that they think in terms of the system – and not just in terms of, you know, freedom to write what you want in the moment – but what are the checks and balances more broadly, and what are the sort of prophylactic steps you can take, to make sure that you build a system that ultimately can withstand the kinds of disinformation shocks, but also, you know, any changes in leadership, you know, or changes in political will, that those systems are strong enough to endure, you know, people who might be less intent, again, on growing this sector.