Mustafa Nayyem of Ukraine’s reconstruction agency: ‘We have great goals, we will achieve them’
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To suffer the fallout of one full-scale invasion by Moscow is bad enough. Mustafa Nayyem has suffered the consequences of two — 2,000 miles apart.
He was born in Kabul in 1981, where the arrival of Soviet forces ultimately led his family to emigrate. Having grown up in Ukraine, and become a journalist, activist and reformist politician, he found himself on a Russian kill list when Vladimir Putin sent in troops.
“This occupation for my family is quite similar to 1979. Both are about imperialistic interference of one country in the life of another country.”
But Nayyem comes to emphasise the differences between Kyiv and Kabul, not the similarities. As head of Ukraine’s reconstruction agency, his job now is to show a vigour and transparency that the Afghan authorities could not muster over the past two decades.
Addressing the damage of the first year of the war — until February 2023 — will require more than $400bn, the World Bank has estimated. Donors, burnt by their experiences elsewhere, worry about billions wasted or stolen. Private investors worry about making investments that could be blown up within weeks. As of March, there was a shortfall of $11bn in reconstruction funds for this year alone.
At this week’s Ukraine Recovery Conference in London, Nayyem is urging Kyiv’s allies to help the country rebuild now, even while the war goes on.
“For many of our partners there will be a big surprise how transparent and accountable reconstruction can be. The Ukrainian government still works — and it works well,” he says over Zoom from Kyiv, looking exhausted. Unlike Afghanistan post-2003, Ukraine has “its own [raw] materials” and “big construction companies”.
Kyiv is asking for money and expertise. But above all, it is asking for speed. The international financial institutions “are quite slow . . . not because they don’t want to help, but because they’re used to working [at] this kind of tempo the last century”. (Nayyem declines to name institutions to avoid causing offence, but big players include the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development and the IMF.) “We need much more simplified procedures.”
One example is the electricity infrastructure, targeted by Russian attacks last year. “We are trying to build shelters [to protect substations against future attacks], but the international community hasn’t responded yet . . . They don’t understand how to do it so fast.”
Another is the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, which means a new, 150km pipeline is needed to serve regions that relied on the reservoir for their drinking water. “Of course we can start to do research, then strategy, then a feasibility study, then project design, then international review of the project, then compliance and everything. But it will take a year or two.”
Instead, within two days of the dam’s collapse, Nayyem’s State Agency for Restoration had begun building the new pipeline. “I think in four months we finish this project. By the procedures of our partners, we would never do it in four months . . . We have to because we are living here . . . Recovery will start after the war. Now we are talking survival stage.”
Nayyem has played a key role in Ukraine’s push for pro-western, transparent politics. In November 2013, as then president Viktor Yanukovych lurched away from closer co-operation with the EU, the former journalist posted on Facebook: “Who today is ready to come to Maidan before midnight? ‘Likes’ don’t count.” The Maidan uprising — a wave of large-scale protests — began that night, and Yanukovych was ousted three months later.
Nayyem was elected as an MP allied to Yanukovych’s successor, Petro Poroshenko, but distanced himself after becoming disillusioned with his halfhearted commitment to press freedom and tackling corruption efforts. “[Poroshenko’s] greatest weakness is that he values money over everything else,” Nayyem told Reuters at the time. He did not seek re-election in 2019, instead taking roles under Poroshenko’s successor, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a Ukrainian defence conglomerate and then as deputy infrastructure minister. The role is part “destiny”, he says: his father was deputy education minister in Afghanistan, in charge of building schools.
This role has made him sanguine when faced with disasters such as the Kakhovka dam’s collapse. “We get used to [living] in this stress, when every day you can have new tasks,” he says, pulling on a vape.
The reality is still bracing. “Those who are building the pipelines — every day, they are shelled.” Restoring the water supply will require 300km of pipes and 56 water pumps, which will take several months to manufacture. The pipes and the pumps will have to be imported.
In the meantime, residents of the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih have been told to cut water use by 40 per cent. Even building a new pipeline in four months may not be quick enough; a stop-gap solution may be needed. “We will invent something. We are now trying to think how we can deliver what temporarily — by trucks, by train, something.”
Replacing the dam itself “will take huge time. During the Soviet Union, it took nine years to build it . . . We can do it in two, three years maybe.” Filling the reservoir will take years more.
Reconstruction attracts sceptics. Ukraine is ranked 116th in Transparency International’s corruption perception index, below Lesotho and Belarus, although it has improved in recent years. A deputy infrastructure minister was arrested in January, accused of taking a bribe related to the supply of generators. A new online database — Dream — will make information on all Ukraine’s public construction contracts freely available. “We understand that transparency generates trust,” says Nayyem.
Another doubt surrounds the wisdom of rebuilding infrastructure in war zones. Nayyem calls this “stupid”. “We are not going to restore some museums or libraries on the territories that are shelled.”
He also has a personal story. Last June his brother Masi, a lawyer who had volunteered for the army, was injured by a mine near Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine. The road to Dnipro had been shelled, then repaired. Had it not been repaired, Masi’s journey to specialists might have taken four hours. In fact it took two hours. Masi lost his eye, but he survived. “Our work saved hundreds of lives. Of course they can shell [the road], but we will build it again.”
Will some villages in Ukraine never be rebuilt? “Yes . . . it’s reality. In some sense, this war is the chance to change things for the better.” Ukraine’s post-Soviet infrastructure is “overloaded with many things that we don’t need.”
One of Nayyem’s biggest challenges is prioritising needs, but priorities are continually changing. “We didn’t know in Lugano [at the previous Ukraine reconstruction conference in July 2022] that energy infrastructure would be shelled in November, we didn’t know about dams, we didn’t know about those territories that would be deoccupied in Kherson.”
Energy is “urgent”. Ukraine was “lucky” to keep the lights on after Russia’s attacks on the electricity grid last November. “For next season our energy grid will be more safe.” Nearly half of inquiries to his agency are about housing. “It’s people who don’t have anywhere to live.” Nayyem says Ukrainian refugees will only return when Kyiv can offer security, jobs and housing: “Patriotism is not enough.” He says the authorities can rebuild “thousands” of homes a month.
But he also emphasises the unpredictability of the Russian threat: “We don’t know what will happen tomorrow.” A grain export deal with Russia comes to an end on July 17. Will it be renewed? “I don’t know.”
Ukraine has no halcyon past to rebuild. Its per capita gross domestic product before the war was $4,800, on a purchasing power basis — less than half of Russia’s $12,200 and a third lower than Belarus’s $7,300. Oligarchs have gripped the economy since independence.
Can Nayyem imagine a more inclusive Ukraine? “Of course I have some dreams. We had all these dreams, starting from 2005 when our first Maidan [protests] happened.” And in 2005 “none of us could even imagine we would have some kind of tools that we could have now, regarding free media, regarding procurement, regarding de-oligarchisation”.
“After all Maidans we always expect some immediate changes.” Nayyem urges his compatriots to remember the costs they have incurred.
“Human beings are weak. The most important [thing] is not dreaming; it’s remembering all this price, and not allowing the rollback of all these changes that we have reached in the last, let’s say, 18 years. That will be much more difficult, in some sense, in peacetime than in wartime. During war, you know who your enemy is. It’s a big tragedy but in some sense it’s easier than fighting bureaucracy, fighting for reforms, when you have all these vested interests and you have all this grey zone.
“The only thing I know is that our people, after this war, will be more intolerant to the bad consequences of bureaucracy and corruption.” In 2005, “we were kids”. After the war, “we will be much [more] mature as a country and as a generation. We will be much more mature in knowing the price of compromises and the price of calmness when you see something bad . . . We have great goals, we will achieve them. We will definitely win, but when and for what price?”
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