Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg told the UK Guardian this week while in Europe that the U.S. backs a plan to rebuild war-torn Ukraine after Russia withdraws with a “Marshall Plan” that will involve billions of dollars in aid.
Buttigieg was in Europe for a meeting of transportation ministers from all over the world — though the U.S. is suffering supply chain shortages, a baby formula crisis, and jammed cargo ports that theoretically fall within Buttigieg’s portfolio.
The idea of a “Marshall Plan” has been championed by former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, whose tenure was widely associated with corruption, leading to the election in 2019 of current president Volodymyr Zelensky in protest.
It is unclear how the U.S. and other donor nations would monitor the disbursement of aid funds to the notoriously corrupt nation. A recent U.S. military aid bill offering $40 billion in new spending lacked oversight by an inspector general.
Butgigieg told the Guardian: ““With the memory of the Marshall plan in mind, what we’re talking about is not only about how we fund immediate needs and support their ability to maintain the war effort, but how we support the ability of Ukraine to be economically viable and generate a sustainable future for themselves, even as they’re under attack.”
Buttigieg argued that spending money on rebuilding transportation in Ukraine was necessary to alleviate global food and fertilizer shortages.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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