Leaders at an annual conference in Rome on rebuilding war-torn Ukraine have pledged more than 10 billion euros ($11.7 billion), Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Thursday.
European Union and Ukrainian leaders gathered in Rome at the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2025 meeting on July 10.
Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy opened the event.
“Together, at today’s conference, we have made commitments totaling over 10 billion euros.”
She said that Russia must not benefit from the recovery effort in any way.
“We will have to take into account those who did everything they could to prevent this barbarity and those who did not,” she said. “That’s why we want to work with Ukraine to prevent reconstruction benefiting those entities that helped finance the Russian war machine, as also written in the declaration of the G7 finance ministers.”
It’s the fourth such conference on Ukraine’s recovery since the Russia–Ukraine conflict began in 2022, following earlier editions in Lugano, Switzerland, in 2022; in London in 2023; and in Berlin in 2024.
The World Bank Group, the European Commission, and the United Nations have estimated that Ukraine’s war recovery will cost $524 billion over the next decade. This is 2.8 times the estimated nominal GDP of Ukraine for 2024, according to a Feb. 25 statement from the World Bank Group.
Von der Leyen said that the EU had created “a new European Flagship Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine, rebuilding businesses and homes.”
The “Coalition of the Willing” is made up of 31 countries that have pledged support for Ukraine against Russia.
At the meeting, the group announced that it will have a new permanent headquarters in Paris, with plans in place for a future coordination cell in Kyiv.
The 3-star multinational operational headquarters, led by the UK and France, will oversee all tactical and operational arrangements.
The force is expected to provide logistics, training, and armament, and experts to help Ukraine’s armed forces, as well as secure Ukraine’s skies and the Black Sea.
The pledges come amid a recent heightening of tensions in the Russia–Ukraine conflict.
Moscow’s forces have upped aerial attacks in recent weeks.
The Ukrainian Air Force said Moscow unleashed 550 drones and missiles over the country, with the vast majority being Iranian Shahed UAVs.
Kyiv’s forces said they managed to neutralize 478 of the weapons launched, with air defenses downing 270 targets, including two cruise missiles, and another 208 lost from radar and presumed jammed.
However, Russia succeeded in hitting eight locations with nine missiles and 63 drones.
On July 9, Russia launched 728 Shahed and decoy drones, as well as 13 missiles, at Ukraine overnight.
Zelenskyy said the northwestern city of Lutsk, near the Polish and Belarusian borders, was the hardest hit, although 10 other regions were also struck.
This week, U.S. President Donald Trump has signaled he’s open to supporting legislation in Congress that would authorize new sanctions targeting Russia.
