A delegation from Ukraine arrived in Taiwan on Sunday, hoping to secure assistance from Taiwanese firms to rebuild in the aftermath of the Russian invasion.
The delegation was led by Mykola Tkachenko, CEO of ProZorro, the Ukrainian government’s procurement system. ProZorro was established after the ouster of Ukraine’s fabulously corrupt pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych in 2014 with the goal of creating a more transparent and open system for government purchases that would be less prone to corruption. “Prozorro” means “transparency” in Ukrainian, and the system also established an oversight board called “Dozorro,” or “watchdog.”
Tkachenko brought leaders from Ukrainian industry to highlight the opportunities that will (hopefully) be available in Ukraine after the war is over. He hoped in turn that Ukrainians would gain a better understanding of Taiwan’s advanced technology industry and how it could be harnessed to rebuild devastated Ukrainian sectors like energy and health care.
The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) hosted a forum on Tuesday during which about two hundred Taiwanese business representatives watched presentations from Ukrainian energy and health care groups. Ukrainian power company executives were especially interested in using Taiwanese technology to advance their Soviet-era power grid.
TAITRA said the Ukrainian delegation would meet with more Taiwanese tech executives before returning home on Friday. TAITRA chairman James Huang said he would also arrange meetings with Taiwanese construction executives for his Ukrainian guests.
Ukraine’s infrastructure has been ravaged by the Russian invasion, leaving its population vulnerable to extreme cold. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said in November that half of Ukraine’s power infrastructure has been either damaged or completely wiped out by the Russians, leaving civilians at the mercy of “respiratory infections such as Covid-19, pneumonia, influenza, and the serious risk of diphtheria and measles in the under-vaccinated population.”
Ukrainian officials complain Russia has been using a brutal “double-tap’ strategy it perfected during its intervention in the Syrian civil war. Double-tap involves bombing a civilian structure, waiting for first responders to arrive at the scene, and then bombing again to maximize casualties. Military analysts in the U.S. and Europe have noticed Russia is increasingly striking the same building multiple times, with a delay of about half an hour between attacks, which is a classic sign of double-tapping.
Double-tap tactics also have the terrible side effect of increasing infrastructure damage, as first responders grow reluctant to put out fires or repair damaged structures.
On Wednesday, the Council of Europe (CoE) unanimously approved a resolution calling for seized Russian assets to be used for rebuilding Ukraine.
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