Europe and Eurasia

European Commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, discusses macroeconomic trends, the impact of universal tariffs on the global trading system, and the state of transatlantic relations.  Please note there is no virtual component to the meeting. The audio, video, and transcript of this meeting will be posted on the CFR website. The C. Peter McColough Series on International Economics brings the world’s foremost economic policymakers and scholars to address members on current topics in international economics. This meeting series is presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies. This meeting is presented by RealEcon: Reimagining American Economic Leadership, a CFR initiative of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.

Panelists discuss global financial efforts to support the reconstruction of Ukraine and help rebuild the country’s infrastructure and economy following Russia’s military aggression. This meeting is part of the Council Special Initiative on Securing Ukraine's Future. This event is part of the Wachenheim Program on Peace and Security which is made possible by the generous support of the Sue and Ed Wachenheim Foundation.  

Heidi Crebo-Rediker, senior fellow in the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at CFR, discusses Ukraine’s mineral resources and their role in a negotiated settlement to end the war. Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, discusses Scranton’s social and economic ties to Ukraine, implications of the Trump administration's approach to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and ways state and local officials can broaden diplomatic relations with the region. TRANSCRIPT FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations State and Local Officials Webinar. I am Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. CFR is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, educator, and publisher focused on U.S. foreign policy. CFR is also the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. And through our State and Local Officials initiative, CFR serves as a resource on international issues affecting the priorities and agendas of state and local governments by providing background and analysis on a wide range of policy topics. We appreciate your being with us today. We have more than 200 participants from forty-three U.S. states and two territories joining this discussion. And as a reminder, it’s on the record, and we will circulate the video and transcript after the fact and post it on our website at CFR.org. So we’re pleased to have Heidi Crebo-Rediker and Paige Gebhardt Cognetti with us today to speak on securing Ukraine, and the economic and social implications for communities and state and local governments here in the U.S. We’ve shared their bios with you, but—so I’ll give a few highlights. Heidi Crebo-Rediker is an adjunct senior fellow at CFR and a partner at International Capital Strategies. Prior to her time at CFR, she served as the U.S. Department of State’s first chief economist. She was also the chief of international finance and economics for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. And we circulated to you in advance a policy paper that she authored entitled The Art of a Good Deal: Ukraine’s Strategic Economic Opportunity for the United States. And this was part of a Council special initiative entitled Securing Ukraine’s Future, which provides informed analysis and practical policy recommendations on our website. So you can go there to find more resources. Paige Gebhardt Cognetti is the mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania. She previously served as a director on the Scranton School Board. Mayor Cognetti also served as a senior advisor to the undersecretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department. And she is a Rodel fellow, class of 2023. So thank you both for being with us. Heidi, I thought we would start first with you to talk about the economic incentives that you see would help the United States bring an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and talk a little bit about the critical minerals play that is—debate that’s happening. CREBO-REDIKER: Sure. Well, first of all, thank you to Irina and to Paige for doing this today, and also to everybody for joining. As Irina mentioned, at the Council on Foreign Relations we actually recently launched this special initiative on Securing Ukraine’s Future because with President Trump and his new administration coming into office there was obviously and clearly telegraphed going to be a very different approach to how the United States would be providing support to Ukraine and its struggle post the 2022 Russian invasion in many different ways. And as a result of that, we thought, well, we need to put our heads together and put our heads into what the Trump administration is thinking and come up with a few good ideas for them on how they might approach a shared vision of security with Ukraine moving forward. And so I was sort of challenged to come up with what is the economic rationale? What is that deal that Ukraine can bring to the table? Because coming into the White House, it was pretty clear that President Trump and his team were talking about not only bringing a swift end to the war against Ukraine but that they are a drain on U.S. resources. And so how do you sell Ukraine as a compelling investment opportunity, rather than being a zero-sum drain on U.S. resources? And so the first place to go really is that it has a significant amount of critical mineral and rare earths resources. Some of them are, you know, already being—are already being extracted and processed. Some of them are in the ground to be developed at some future date. But that was clearly one area where—because we have this U.S.-China strategic competition, where China really dominates the extraction, refining, and processing of critical minerals and rare earths, we really do need to have some other sources. (Laughs.) You know, today, of all days, where we have the escalation in trade war against China, this is one of the asymmetric ways that China could hit us. So Ukraine has these. And so that was sort of, like, point number one of what they have to bring to the table. The second thing I flagged was that they have—they have really a tremendous defense industrial base. So they have the ability internally to generate their own—their own innovation in defense. And they actually—you know, many have made the argument that they are at the cutting edge, if not leading where the future of warfare is and will be, because they have such a sophisticated—a sophisticated drone, and electronic warfare, and the implementation of using artificial intelligence in weaponry. That is—that is an area where we actually in the United States could use their technology, their knowledge, their know-how. And they are also a very inexpensive producer of technology for—i.e., for Europe, moving forward, as they sort of move on the path to EU accession. And then the last thing was really, they—you know, the Ukrainians are extremely sophisticated cyber actors. And to have them on our side is actually—would be a great benefit. So those three things I put out there. The Ukrainians were very much on board with the critical minerals part. In fact, that was something that they had floated several months before, and Lindsey Graham had had flagged that they have trillions and trillions of resources in the ground. And if we were to work together with them in an agreement where we had shared economic security, that it could be—they could be our best business partners moving forward. So the Ukrainians themselves had put the critical minerals and rare earths on the table as a way to work with the United States and show that they were going to be a great partner, and that they could be part of our security solution to a larger—a larger challenge that is the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China, which put the critical minerals, again, at the center of the national security agenda in the U.S. I’ll leave it there to start off because it’s sort of—that negotiation and where it’s gone has taken on a life of itself. And I’m happy to go into that. But I definitely want to hand the—hand the podium or the screen over to Paige to talk a little bit about how Scranton, in particular, has played a role in the military industrial production of weaponry for Ukraine, and also about its community which has been deeply tied to Ukraine for cultural and historic reasons. COGNETTI: Thank you, Heidi. Yes. I am Paige Cognetti, the mayor of Scranton. Scranton is in northeastern Pennsylvania. We are 120 miles east—or, west of New York City, and just a couple of hours from Philadelphia. So geopolitically here in the northeast of the United States. We have been a strategic location for manufacturing from, you know, the very beginning, back in the industrial revolution. And that continues today. I know when folks out there think of Scranton or some of the Rust Belt areas, I like to say legacy city, when we think about that we don’t think about manufacturing being live. We think about it being gone. And it’s just so not the case. We actually still have 11 percent of our jobs in northeastern Pennsylvania that are from manufacturing. And even though we aren’t an enormous hub of defense contracting, we have many, many defense contractors, some of them pretty critical. I mean, all very critical, but some of them that are much bigger and more influential than you realize when you skim the surface of the DOD budgets and contracts. So northeastern Pennsylvania is very much part of the growth of DOD reshoring some of the manufacturing. And we’ve enjoyed that in Scranton itself. So we have a munitions plant that makes shells. It’s been an Army installation since 1953. It’s run by General Dynamics and employees—about three years ago it was 300 folks that are part of the Aerospace Workers and Machinists Union. Now we’re, I think, almost up to about 400, because DOD put in about a quarter of a billion dollars into that facility in the last eighteen months or so. So it’s right in the heart of our downtown. It also—it’s not out in the rural area. It’s not, you know, out in the suburbs. It is right downtown. It’s very famous in our city and our region. So many generations of people have worked there. And a point of pride for us in these last three long and terrible years since Russia invaded Ukraine is that those munitions that we are making in Scranton, those generational families are making, they’re going to Ukraine. The shells get shipped to Iowa. They’re filled in Iowa, and then shipped either to U.S. installations or to our allies abroad. So we’ve had a lot of folks come through from different branches of the military, different politicians, and especially the media over the last few years to see what it’s like to help the Ukrainians in a real way, right in a place like Scranton. And it’s not just the munitions piece. We actually have a fairly significant diaspora of Ukrainian Americans. We have multiple churches that are Ukrainian churches. Especially we have Father Myron, who has a brother that is still in Ukraine. He’s made trips himself. They’ve had a big effort from the beginning a few years ago fundraising, making pierogi, and taking the proceeds from selling—you know, buying things to send to Poland and get over the border. It’s been a real community effort. Kids from our high school—there’s Ukrainian families that, you know, have moved from Ukraine in this war period, and their kids are going to high school in West Scranton. So we have, you know, fundraisers and all of that to support our brothers and sisters in Ukraine. So it’s been a—it’s been a strange bright spot and an absolute point of pride in Scranton. On the flip side then, it makes it even more difficult to see the American policy toward Ukraine seem to change. That’s been difficult for the Ukrainian families. We have Ukrainian soldiers who have been wounded in the war that are now living in Scranton and convalescing, and the churches and the families they are taking care of them. It’s been tough for—tough for morale to see that policy seem to shift. And there is a tremendous amount of anxiety about that. And that’s in addition to just general anxiety, I would say, with the uncertainty of what U.S. military policy is, what our strategy is abroad. A lot of folks, our military families, are increasingly anxious about what that means for their sons and daughters abroad. And when it comes to Ukraine, there’s a lot of support for Ukraine that’s going to stay steadfast. We’re supporting the installation, of course. We want to make sure that that continues to grow. But it’s been a—it’s been a tough few months. And the real—I can’t even imagine still that I got to do this. I got to greet President Zelensky in Scranton in September of last year. It was a visit. He was there in New York for UNGA, so he came over. And he came to the plant. He stood on the floor of the plant and greeted and thanked those 400 workers himself. It was an incredibly powerful moment. He could not have been more thankful to them. He shook their hands. He chatted with them. It was just so personal and so real. And then that visit since has been politicized quite a bit, which has been unfortunate. So we continue to support all of the efforts here in Scranton. We want to want—we don’t want them to be necessary, but we certainly are proud of what we’ve done to date. And we’ll continue to support Ukraine as best we can from Scranton, Pennsylvania. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. We can go to questions from the group. (Gives queuing instructions.) We’d love to hear from you. You can talk about what’s happening in your community as well. And I have other questions as well too, so—but please, do not be shy. We want to hear from all of you. OK, so as we wait for questions, I will start. Heidi, can you talk about how the war has impacted local economies in sectors like food and agriculture, and what you’re seeing on that front? CREBO-REDIKER: So, I mean, Ukraine is the—it’s known as the breadbasket of Europe, and has certainly—you know, I think one of the early victories—just to connect the agriculture with some of the innovation on the ground in warfare—some of the—some of the early naval drones that Ukraine was able to concoct out of, like, speed boats, and jet skis, and things like that, managed to push off the Black Sea Fleet. Which is not insignificant. This is sort of the Russian Black Sea Fleet that was based in Crimea and Sevastopol, to be able to clear the Black Sea for grain exports. So agriculture has held up in terms of the ability to produce and to export. But again, it’s a challenge. You have a lot of the—a lot of the—a lot of the places where you would have—where, you know, you have tractors that are plowing for planting and for harvesting are also areas that are—that are heavily mined. And so it’s not—it’s certainly not easy to create a heavily agricultural dependent economy during a time of warfare. But they seem to have actually managed to do quite a substantially good job with that. I would say that the—you know, even under the tremendous pressure of war, the Ukrainians have managed to keep their growth resilient. Over the past three years, their GDP is estimated by the IMF to be—to have been about 3 ½ percent for 2024. Probably going to moderate this year because they have had labor constraints, and also the Russians have really decimated their energy infrastructure. And even when President Putin has said that they would not attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, they, of course, have. (Laughs.) And so that continues to be a real challenge. So labor is a challenge. You have displacement of a significant number of millions of people, both internally in Ukraine and then throughout Europe, primarily. And as a result you have—you know, you have some pressures on the labor market. The IMF has actually stepped in with a substantial program. And they continue to provide, even and under extraordinary uncertainty, a program of 15 ½ billion (dollars) of an extended fund facility, which is—which basically comes up for review. They review how the Ukrainians have performed under it. And as of the end of February, they released the next tranche because the economy has actually been performing. The Ukrainians have been performing. And they’ve met all of their benchmarks, even under exceptionally uncertain circumstances of this war. FASKIANOS: Thank you. And, Paige, in terms of your experience in Scranton, what do you think can or should be done at the local level to strengthen support for Ukraine in other parts of the country? And especially at a time when President Trump has signaled that he wants the war to end and to move on. So what do you think would work to rally support? COGNETTI: I think not shying away from the topic, right? So we have the Ukrainian flag flying at city hall pretty frequently in Scranton. We raised it on the anniversary of the invasion just last month. We have a lot of folks that wear Ukrainian pins or T-shirts or hats around. And you see them actually more now than ever, I would say. You see them with dads on the soccer field and people with stickers on their cars. And I realize that the diaspora here is larger than it probably is in a lot of places, and having the munitions plant right downtown keeps it on our minds as so many folks in Scranton are there doing that work every day. But it really is a rallying cry for us, and it makes us feel proud to be American and proud to support our allies abroad. We have a lot of veterans here in Scranton, so it’s natural for us to have that on our mind and to have the sustained empathy for what the folks in Ukraine have gone through, and to care deeply about what the policy toward Ukraine and Europe is. We also have a large Polish population. Those folks are, of course, always concerned about their family abroad and what could happen if Ukraine were to, you know, fall completely to the Russians. So it really is a topic of conversation, one that people don’t shy away from. And it’s cross-partisan. I would say there are as many folks on one side of the aisle as others who you would see have a Ukrainian flag on their vehicle. So it’s an issue that does kind of cut across those divides, which is good for us and I think shows that there’s hope out there that we can—we can cross over, we can have these conversations if we keep pushing ourselves to have them, and if we have great community leadership at every level, if the churches are active, if people are active in going out and making those pierogi and helping out. It really shows that we really need to make sure the social fabric of our communities is alive and well and out there in person working toward a common goal. CREBO-REDIKER: I think that’s actually—it’s incredibly important. There’s been—up until—up until fairly recently, we’ve had strong bipartisan support in Washington to support Ukraine because, you know, they were brutally invaded. And we all watched this play out over the past couple of years. And I think there’s enormous American support. But also in Washington all of the funds that were provided and the military equipment that was provided was supported by Congress on both sides of the aisle. So what you’re talking about, Paige, in terms of having the resonance come from the ground, you know, and I think it’s not just in Scranton, but really across the country, you know, the majority of Americans really do overwhelmingly support Ukraine. And it’s war for its sovereignty. The one thing I will—I will say, one of the reasons that at the Council we wanted to make sure that we stepped up and tried to provide some helpful guidance to secure Ukraine’s future is because there are a lot of—there’s concern right now, and I think some real pessimism, that while President Trump really does want to see an end to the war, that that end will be at the expense of Ukraine’s sovereignty. So how do we—how do we figure that out, and make sure that we don’t have a situation where Putin wants victory, not peace. As you said, you have a Polish population. The Poles certainly understand what the consequences are if Ukraine falls. I think the Europeans do as well. So to the extent that we can actually work not only at the state—at the state and local level, but also make sure that it’s understood in Washington that support for Ukraine is key to not only Ukraine’s security, but to European security. COGNETTI: And I’d add to that the subnational diplomacy piece as well. That having sister cities—we’re developing a sister city relationship in Ukraine. It’s important for governors, mayors to have that that subnational tie to cities and other states abroad, so that the information is coming up from the community level. So that the folks in other cities around the world know that there are people that support them no matter good, bad, or ugly—whatever foreign policy might look like. If you have those local ties throughout the decades, that helps the understanding, that helps to keep optimism when things take a turn for, you know, reasons that are completely beyond the control of anyone in these smaller communities. Those subnational diplomatic ties and sister cities, they are there for very important reasons. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from a raised hand from Councilmember Doug Stauffer, I believe, in Niceville, Florida. You need to unmute yourself. There you go. Q: And it is Doug Stauffer from Niceville. So— FASKIANOS: OK, thank you for correcting me. Q: Our new motto is Niceville, yes, we are. FASKIANOS: (Laughs.) Wonderful. Q: So I wrote out a little question just because—and I want to preface my question with the point that I have Ukrainian friends in Ukraine, missionary families there. But given Ukraine’s substantial economic strategic value to the U.S.—highlighted by the rare earth mineral reserves, the cutting-edge defense industry, cyber capabilities you all mentioned—do you think the United States can ensure that ongoing support does not devolve into an open-ended or endless war, but instead leads to negotiated settlement securing both Ukrainian sovereignty and U.S. strategic gains? Do you think that can even happen? CREBO-REDIKER: So I think that is—that is the ambition. And I think that President Trump has made it clear that his ambition is to bring the—or, to stop the killing, but certainly to bring the war to an end. The ending in twenty-four hours was always a little bit optimistic—(laughs)—but, you know, to the extent that there—that the administration is investing time and energy into, like, concluding a settlement, that I do firmly believe that Ukraine has, again, a substantial amount to put on the table. And I think that they are ready and willing to put shared economic—a shared economic security future together with the United States. In the back and forth of negotiations on sort of what—you know, what—the devil in the details, which is what the agreement—where the agreement will actually land, you have this week a technical delegation coming to D.C. to continue negotiating the terms and conditions. And right now, you have the fund—it’s gone—the proposal for a reconstruction fund has gone beyond just critical minerals and rare earths, and it also is—it includes infrastructure projects, all natural resource projects. As you know, Ukraine has oil and gas reserves. And so those are—those are on the table as well. And I think it’s really can Ukraine have that shared economic future in a way that provides additional funding and support, as opposed to having, right now, where the terms and conditions are basically to repay for what was already allocated from Congress during the Biden administration? And I think, you know, the devil, again, is in the details. And those details are being worked out. But how do you—how do you actually have shared economic security, which I think Ukraine is very happy to put on the table, where it doesn’t cross that line into where they’re giving up control of their sovereignty, without any guarantees, without any security guarantees, without any—without any contribution of fresh funds for those investments? And so that’s where—that’s where it stands right now. I do think that Ukraine, you know, it is still an active, you know, war zone. And they—there are parts of the country that are very much—you know, they’re contested, and a lot of the critical minerals are actually near parts of the country that are either occupied by Russia right now or in very close—very, you know, adjacent to those—to that part of the geography. But, again, it’s a matter of negotiation. I do—I’m very hopeful that they will be able to come to a conclusion. I think the Ukrainians really do want to move forward with the U.S. as an economic partner. I think that model fits very well with what President Trump wants in terms of not getting something for nothing. If Ukraine is going to continue to have U.S. support, then there should be some way to share in their economic future. And there’s also, from the Trump side, an idea that the best guarantee that Ukraine could have is if the U.S. had economic interests that were there to safeguard. So that is, you know, again, it’s a different—it’s a different approach to how we have supported Ukraine in the past. But it’s not something that Ukraine’s pushing back on. It’s just that they’re negotiating the terms of a deal right now. That deal, also just in terms of the infrastructure and sort of the having the right of first refusal on all, you know, rail, port, pipeline, you know, roads, anything moving forward, it needs to be able to coexist with Ukraine’s path to EU accession. So a lot of that infrastructure, a lot of reorienting Ukraine’s economy away from what it was in the past, which was very much connected to Russia, to really having everything moving forward connected to the European Union. And that very—that’s very much—infrastructure is very central to that. FASKIANOS: Paige, you want to comment, or? COGNETTI: No—(inaudible). Yeah. FASKIANOS: OK, great. There are two written questions, and they go hand in hand, and they’re both from Pennsylvania. So Steve Brown, who’s a township manager in southeastern Pennsylvania. I’ve attended two sessions at recent ICMA conferences about Ukraine. However, I’m struggling to figure out how a small, local government and community can support them. And then Sherry Forste-Grupp, who’s a Second Ward commissioner of Haverford Township in Pennsylvania, says: I agree with Steve Brown about how could a small, local municipality support Ukraine? How would a municipality develop a sister-city relationship with a town in Ukraine? COGNETTI: Great questions. Great to see you guys. We work with, I think it’s, Sister Cities International. And I would be happy to share that information with you offline. We can chat through. And we’ve been really lucky to work with them on the sister city in Ukraine. And then we worked with the State Department. We’re developing a sister city relationship with Armenia as well. That was through the Subnational Diplomacy Office at the State Department. So there’s different avenues, but I would love to talk to you about it. I think Pennsylvania has so many Ukrainian Americans and so many people that are passionate about supporting Ukraine through, you know, every outcome, right? And so we’d love to talk to you about that, and get you on board. CREBO-REDIKER: So there are also, you know, in terms of the—you know, there are many different challenges that that social groups are trying to—trying to solve for right now. There were—there were a whole lot of Ukrainian kids who were basically kidnapped and brought to Russia. And there’s a process to try and get those children brought back to Ukraine, and reunite them with their families. And so I know—I know that there are a lot of local community organizations that are partnering with charities that are very much focused on the return of Ukrainian children to Ukraine. So there—I mean, you can go and find those. You know, I think there’s—one of them is BlueCheck. But there are sort of different types of organizations out there that communities can connect with that really are important. They’re not necessarily, you know, sister city, but they are deeply important to Ukraine and to Ukraine’s future. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. I’m going to take the next question, a raised hand from Esmeralda Lozano, who’s a commissioner in La Feria, Texas. If you can accept—there we go. Q: Hello. And thank you for having this very important Zoom session. My town is literally about twenty minutes from the Mexican border. And immigration is always front and center. I myself am of Mexican heritage. And right now, you know, immigration is a very, very big issue in Texas. It never has stopped. I think in countries on the eastern border, it’s—you know, it wavers in terms of intensity. But in Texas, it’s never quite been something that’s out of mind. And with that said, there’s a lot of support for Ukraine from our regional area. We are a border regional area that has four different counties. And in my little small town I know that kids from our different churches want to connect with kids that are in the Ukraine. I know that we’ve got families. We have some Ukrainian families who have—who were able to make it down to the Rio Grande Valley, and who are staying with friends who were once professors over there in Ukraine, during peaceful times. But it’s kind of the same question that echoes—and I thank you, Paige, for sending us that information. But how would we go about—there are families who want to send, gently—very gently worn clothes, coats. How do we get supplies out there? How do we get money out there? How do we help? And I think this is very important because our kids are understanding that even though our country is not being very kind to Ukraine right now, they’re finding it in their hearts that there’s an importance to this. So, Paige, I’m wondering if you can elaborate on that, being from, I’m assuming, a small town. It sounds like a small town, the way, make it sound. (Laughs.) I mean, it’s way bigger than my little town of like, 6,000. COGNETTI: We’re 80,000, but it’s a small town. Q: Oh good God, you’re bigger than us, yeah, for sure. COGNETTI: So I—we’ve gone through the churches, but I can easily ask Father Myron and others what the best mechanism—or what different mechanisms would be. You know, there might be others out there that we can source for you, but I certainly can ask them what the latest is. It’s been helpful, again, because there’s family members from our community over in Ukraine. So there’s been, you know, some continuity there in terms of updating what works and what doesn’t. And then, you know, we could always ask the U.S. embassy there as well. CREBO-REDIKER: I would also look at—reach out to the Ukrainian embassy here in Washington, because they have a great—they have their finger on the pulse of all of the different resources and ways to plug in to be supportive. They’re very well aware that it’s not just the diaspora community of Ukrainians here, that there’s very—you know, there’s very widespread support. And, you know, whether it’s, you know, in educational facilities, you know, or religious institutions, that they can be a good resource for plugging into the channels that make the most sense for you. FASKIANOS: Great. I’m going to take the next question from City Administrator Bob Vitas from Illinois: In light of our experiences in the former Yugoslavia during the Clinton administration, how do you believe the U.S. will move forward, following the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development? USAID played a vital role in redevelopment of all aspects of government and business in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo. So, Heidi, do you want to take that? CREBO-REDIKER: So there are—I think every—you know, both the multilateral development agencies and institutions and a number of bilateral development agencies from other countries are all trying to figure out how to fill in the gaps for USAID right now. There are several—you know, I mentioned that the IMF has provided the—sort of the macro funding facility to support Ukraine’s budget. But you also have the World Bank. You have European—you the EBRD, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Europe has its own development bank, the European Investment Bank, which is massive. It’s much larger than the World Bank. And they are not only responsible for helping Ukraine on the path to EU accession, EU membership, but they are providing funds to small businesses, to infrastructure projects. So I think right now there’s a big rethink about how to fill in those gaps for USAID, and their absence. It’s a loss, I think. It’s not just a loss for Ukraine. It’s a loss for a lot of programs around the world. But I do think that there are a lot of other agencies that are stepping up from other countries that are filling—that are trying to fill that gap right now. COGNETTI: You know, just— FASKIANOS: Yeah, Paige. COGNETTI: That shows the importance of those subnational relationships, right? You can have a shock like this happen—I don’t think anybody saw this coming to this degree with this speed—but those subnational relationships really help because those are there regardless of changes in policy at the administration level. And while that isn’t going to, you know, repopulate the shelves for vaccines and those things that matter so much, it’s important that we keep those dialogs alive. And we add to—for, you know, my fellow Pennsylvanians on the call—add to our sister city relationships, add to the continuity and the connectivity between, you know, high schoolers and kids and families and that all that outreach, church to church, school to school, city to city. We need to keep growing that fabric, especially because we’re losing a key tool with USAID going away. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from Tricia Utterback, who is the international trade and investment representative for GO-Biz, which is California’s economic development organization: The states of California, North Carolina, and Washington led a delegation of twenty-five companies to exhibit at ReBuild Ukraine in Warsaw, Poland. Are there local initiatives that might be able to connect the U.S. private sector to the private sector like this? CREBO-REDIKER: Yes. In a word, yes. There are multiple efforts. You know, I think, no matter how important those multilateral and bilateral development funds are for Ukraine and for its reconstruction, you also have, I believe, huge business opportunities and investment opportunities. You have had U.S. companies operating on the ground and continuing to make investment in Ukraine throughout the past several years of war. And there it’s—you know, it’s really across—it’s really across the board. Ukraine has the benefit, unlike many countries in the world, of having a highly educated local population. They are—you know, they have been able to not only connect into sort of small- and medium-sized businesses in agriculture, or in materials, because they do—I mean, they’re a huge producer of metals. In addition to—in addition to critical minerals, they have metals. Steel, aluminum. They also are in—you know, very strong in the chemicals industry. They are manufacturing for some of the European defense manufacturers right now on the ground in Ukraine, which is, I think, a great way for investment to lead to a whole new economy for Ukraine moving forward in the defense industrial base for Europe. I think there are great opportunities. I’m happy to send you links afterwards to sort of where you can find resources to plug into some of the small-, medium-sized, and even large business forums for actually investing in Ukraine. FASKIANOS: Thank you. So as we wait for more questions, Heidi, what are the implications of the war in Ukraine on global energy markets? And how have these affected local energy prices in the U.S.? And I realize this is also—the tariffs are also having an effect on all this. (Laughs.) CREBO-REDIKER: Yeah, this is quite a day for talking about how anything is impacting anything quite as much as the tariff war today, but— FASKIANOS: Right. (Laughs.) But we can try. CREBO-REDIKER: So, I mean, the—clearly, after the 2022 invasion by Russia, we saw one of the largest spikes in energy costs for Europe because of the real dependency, particularly of Germany, but not just Germany really the whole of Europe, on cheap Russian gas. So we’ve had a reconfiguration of the whole of the energy market since then. We’ve had a rolling out of sanctions that have—you know, against all ways that Russia could develop sort of the technology for advanced LNG exports. We’ve had sanctions that are specifically targeted at—targeted at the oil price for Russia, for Russian exports of oil. And we’ve had the development of this whole dark fleet of Russian vessels around the world that are—that are problematic, for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which they’re escaping sanctions and they are there—they tend to be very old ships that are environmentally quite dangerous when they—when they leak, or blow up, or explode, or crash. (Laughs.) But how has it impacted energy markets? I think we saw that big spike in the aftermath of the 2022 invasion. Complete rethink and reinvestment of Europe’s energy supply and diversification. And the U.S. has been insulated, to a certain extent, because we are—we are the largest single producer of petroleum products in the world. And as a result of that, we’ve seen more insulation. And the rest of the world has dealt with the fact that, you know, there have been other things that have had a larger impact on commodity prices, post-2022 invasion, not just Russia and not just Ukraine. FASKIANOS: OK. Going next to, let’s see, Kyle. Let me bring this back up. Kyle Anderson, who is in the Kansas Senate Committee on Ways and Means: If Russia begins increasing its use of nonstate actors—such as the Night Wolves that were involved in the initial Crimea incursions, The Base, or other related groups—how does that change the economics of the support and impact the indirect funding through production of munitions and arms to replace aging equipment that is sent to support the efforts? CREBO-REDIKER: Talking about aging equipment in Ukraine, or aging equipment in Russia? FASKIANOS: Yeah, I’m not clear. Kyle, are you in a place where you can chime in and unmute yourself to clarify? And if not, you can—if you could type. Let’s see, is he coming on? Yes. OK. You just need to unmute yourself. But maybe not. Oh, there we go. CREBO-REDIKER: Kyle? FASKIANOS: OK, we’re not getting sound. So I think—oh, he wrote it. Aging equipment from the U.S. being sent. CREBO-REDIKER: So President Trump, I believe, today announced a trillion in investment into defense. So I think, you know, we did learn through the course of the past three years the constraints that we have on the rapid scaling up of defense manufacturing in the United States was actually, I think, in a lot of horrible ways, but it was helpful to us to actually better understand where U.S. vulnerabilities are in our own defense-industrial base. So there’s the question of, you know, particularly for the large-scale manufacturing of traditional—our traditional defense industrial base. But I think almost as, if not more important, because warfare and the nature of warfare has changed completely, and it’s really taken place on the battlefield between Russia and Ukraine, we’ve seen a movement away from sort of standing armies and very—you know, very large tanks and sort of the legacy systems—move towards where Ukraine produces its own drone rocket that can, like, deliver at 700 kilometers per hour—700 kilometers in distance a strike inside of Russia to blow up refining capacity. That’s very—that’s a very recent phenomenon. It’s not anything that the U.S. has been able to develop. And we’re watching as autonomy is really driving the way that drones are communicating with each other—with one another in swarms, to be able to actually act—still with a human in the loop—but actually to keep humans out of the battlefield, as it becomes more of an autonomous—you know, autonomy becomes the definition of how we are seeing this war play out. So that’s kind of the innovation bucket. On the legacy bucket, I think we really do have to solve in the United States for being able to ramp up and produce and have a very robust defense industrial base here in the United States. Europe is having that same question. They announced—you know, Germany just announced that they are going to do a trillion euros, 500 billion euros for defense production in Germany. And the Europeans, as the European Union, are having that same conversation. Japan is having that same conversation. So we’re all, I think, in the context of a very precarious world with a lot of the challenges outside of Ukraine, particularly in the Taiwan Strait, in the Middle East, looking at what we all need moving forward. So the bad side is that it took a war in Ukraine—(laughs)—and the invasion to kind of lay bare the vulnerabilities, both on the legacy side and also on the advanced, innovative side. And I think we are collectively trying to address that right now in different countries around the world. I hope that answered your question. COGNETTI: Yeah. Can I just hop in? FASKIANOS: Yeah, please. COGNETTI: (Inaudible)—an opportunity that, like Heidi said, we wouldn’t have wanted to play out this way, that we needed this horrible war to be the catalyst for us understanding how deficient we are when it comes to rapid capability. But if that means continued investment in manufacturing, in innovation and R&D in the United States, that means that would need to happen across the country. Lots of places, like northeastern Pennsylvania, that have defense manufacturing and R&D capability already and are ready to be added to. That’s what we saw with the munitions plan. I think it’s a great example of adding capacity now that we’ve needed to, because of our support for Ukraine. I don’t see that diminishing, though. I think that those—that increase, that investment—I mean, we wouldn’t have invested a quarter of a billion dollars in that plan if we thought that we only needed it for this particular situation, right? So we’re excited, from an economic development standpoint, from a jobs standpoint. These are jobs that are absolutely family-sustaining jobs. So we can see that in places like this and across the country, you know, that’s a positive benefit from what is otherwise, you know, obviously a situation we would never have wanted to be in. FASKIANOS: Great. And I just want to share Eric Stroker, from the Office of Santa Clara County Supervisor Otto Lee, in California put in—sharing best practice. We’ll be hosting our third delegation from Ukraine in June 2025. And earlier this year our Ukraine Citizen Diplomacy sister commission held their first meeting. And we’re working to develop a direct sister county relationship with the Kharkiv region. So that’s quite interesting. And he also says Supervisor Lee has been an outspoken local leader and international ally for Ukraine and the people. Great. I’m going to go next to—oh, I think I just dismissed the wrong question as answered. Going back. Hold on. Let me just try to get it. Thank you. The next question, written question, from Zori Opanasevych, from the state of Alaska: Given the recent threats of deportation, do you know of any measures being taken to ensure that Ukrainian refugees can remain in the U.S.? The departure of these individuals can negatively impact towns across the U.S. that have greatly benefited from their contributions. What are your thoughts on providing Ukrainian refugees with the option to secure a permanent residency, should they choose, as their humanitarian parole status nears expiration? CREBO-REDIKER: Very good question. I do not know the answer to that. I think we’re all looking at—I mean, I think that there are some very big changes, obviously, in the approach to immigration and to—and to immigrants in the U.S. And, you know, to the extent that—I mean in my own personal opinion, I think that, you know, we are a country of immigrants. And legal, law-abiding immigrants, who pay taxes, and help grow the U.S. economy, and are supportive, and are here legally, is one of our greatest strengths as a country. So I do hope that Ukrainians that are—that are here for humanitarian reasons get to stay here. (Laughs.) But that’s—again, in just my own—my own capacity. And it’s not an area of my expertise. FASKIANOS: Paige. COGNETTI: Yeah, we certainly are aware of, you know, lots of different families and communities in our city that have fears of the unknown right now. And that’s, you know, across so many different nationalities and so many different levels of status and different types of protection, or what we think they’re—you know, how they’re protected right now. So our ears are on the ground with that. We’ve got great partnerships across our nonprofit and across our community to try to do as best we can to keep up with things. But it really—it is uncertain. But I think the Ukrainian refugees coming over, you know, leaving the war zone, is a great example that this can happen anywhere. And I think it’s important to keep in mind that this is—the people that are seeking asylum and seeking refuge here in the United States, they come from all over. They’re in many different colors, many different religions. You know, the world wants to be in the United States, where we have such great freedom. And we need to remember that that’s who we are as Americans and a country. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from Davis Allen, who is the New Hampshire House of Representatives Science, Technology and Energy Committee researcher: New Hampshire saw some energy price spikes after the start of the conflict in Ukraine. So my question is, what opportunities or threats do an end to the conflict present with regard to the U.S. energy sector. Do different outcomes to the conflict have a significant impact one way or another on the sector? CREBO-REDIKER: So, yes, but it depends how it ends. So I—you know, I don’t know how this is going to end. I know that the—that the that the energy changes that Europe has undertaken have been extraordinary. And it was a huge wake-up call to Germany, in particular, but to Europe that they had depended on Russia so entirely for so many years, and that they could have this kind of a disruption. But, you know, commodity markets are global markets. So if you see price spikes that that happen for one—for any given reason, you’re going to see them reverberate through global commodity markets. Which means that we’re always going to have some impact if there is—if there is an event or if there is a policy, something happens that is a shock to commodity markets. They are global, so we will feel it, for better, for worse. FASKIANOS: And, Paige, one last question to you: Given recent changes in U.S. support from multilateral organizations and foreign aid, how are you thinking about what can be done on a subnational level to fill this void? COGNETTI: I’ve been talking with mayors about this for a while now, wanting to make sure that we stay connected to each other and connect each other with folks in other countries, because we all believe that the subnational dialog is so important. So we, you know, had worked really closely with Ambassador Hachigian in the State Department under the Biden administration. And we continue to look to CFR, to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, to other entities that keep us all connected so that we can continue to do this work and show that, you know, the cities of the United States, the smaller communities in the United States, care about our partners and allies and friends across the globe. We care because we’re people that care about our own communities. We also care because we think that our economic security, our global security, is stronger when we have those dialogs. So we’ll keep connecting. And anybody out there that wants to talk about what local leaders can do, how we can communicate together, and how we can bolster those relationships, I’m happy to help troubleshoot that. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Heidi, any last thoughts? CREBO-REDIKER: Well, I’m just going to say that, Irina, I’m so glad you pulled us together. And, Paige, you made my day because I think when you only focus on the federal you can lose a little bit—and I live in Washington, so it’s sort of—it’s very present—that you forget that our strength really lies with state and local communities. So thank you. COGNETTI: I’m grateful to see you again, Heidi and Irina. Thank you so much for putting us together. FASKIANOS: Thank you both. We really appreciate you’re taking time out of your busy schedule. As I said at the top of this, we will send out a link to the webinar recording and transcript, along with other resources. And, Heidi, we’re going to come back to you for the resources that you referenced. Again, I want to just draw your attention to the Council’s special initiative, Securing Ukraine’s Future. If you go to CFR.org, there’s a big gyro on there. You can click on that and get a lot of resources on Ukraine, as well as on many other areas—trade, tariffs, and the like. So please go to CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for the latest analysis on international trends and how they’re affecting the United States. You can visit Mayor Cognetti to see what she’s doing at ScrantonPA.gov, so go there as well. COGNETTI: Please come to Scranton. It’s not very far from D.C., New York, or other places. (Laughter.) FASKIANOS: I haven’t made it there yet, but I want to. COGNETTI: You’re going to go. I know you— FASKIANOS: I am going to, just to visit you. And we welcome your suggestions for topics for future webinars. We know that we should be doing one soon on immigration and what’s happening there. But send your ideas, speakers our way. You can email us at [email protected]. So, again, thank you all for your participation. And to Heidi Crebo-Rediker and Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti. CREBO-REDIKER: Thank you so much. END