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Away From the Spotlight, a Debate Rages Over a Postwar Ukraine Economy



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With Russian missiles pounding apartment buildings, power plants, schools and roads, a glimmering vision of a reconstructed postwar Ukraine seems impossibly far off. But an urgent battle of ideas has already begun over how to manage what would be the most extensive rebuilding project in Europe since the end of World War II.The sparring has engaged heads of state and the leaders of humanitarian groups, universities and banks from around the world — representing the governments, organizations and companies ready to donate or lend the hundreds of billions of dollars that could be needed, as well as those who stand to profit from it.Attention to salvaging Ukraine’s damaged cities and infrastructure has focused largely on its cost. The tussle over the framework that will in large part be expected to carry out that restructuring has taken place below the surface, gaining far less public notice.Any shift for Ukraine from a wartime to a peacetime economy promises to be fraught, pitting ideas for a strong central government that would target spending with a tighter hand against one with lighter-touch regulation in which free markets dominate. There are other tricky, though perhaps less prominent, transitions that would need to be simultaneously navigated.Three decades have passed since U …

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