The talks between the son of US stock exchange speculator George Soros, Alex Soros and the head of the Ukrainian president's office focused on the development of Ukraine's economy and the country's reconstruction, among other issues.
The meeting was also attended by the deputy head of the president's office, Laura Silber, vice-president for advocacy and communications at Open Society Foundations and Oleksandr Sushko, executive director of the International Renaissance Foundation, the official statement says. The Ukrainian leg of Soros's Open Society Foundations network, the International Renaissance Foundation has been active in the country since 1990.
At the meeting, the participants discussed a range of economic issues besides social issues.
The parties discussed opportunities for developing Ukraine's economy. In this context, they highlighted the importance of infrastructural reconstruction and restoration, as well as the implementation of investment projects,
says the statement issued by the president's office, adding that the participants also emphasized the importance of seizing Russian assets and transferring them to rebuild Ukraine, and the need to increase pressure on Russia through sanctions.
"We are pleased that American entrepreneurs – friends of Ukraine – intend to help our country prevail in the war of aggression unleashed by Russia. We appreciate their contribution to this victory," stressed Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president's office, after the meeting.
As Magyar Nemzet reported in a piece, the investigative forum Tuzfalcsoport recently published a detailed article on the growing focus the world's major financial investment firms and financial institutions place on Ukraine and its post-war reconstruction.
The article says,
it is already apparent that it is not only speculators and big military industrial groups that are profiteering in Ukraine, but investment funds are also lining up in a bid to get a slice of the cake. Some say that Ukraine's leadership is selling out Ukraine to BlackRock.
In an earlier interview, Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, revealed that as one of the largest money-management firms in the world, they have been working for a long time to be able to take a role in Ukraine after the war. And the Ukraine they envision is not just any society but an "open society".
"We've been hired by the Ukrainian government to help them build a reconstruction fund. We have a whole team, they're tasked in building up the team, making sure that we have the organizational structure in place. We're going to help them hire the right team so that Ukraine will be a great place for public money to help restore it. What I told President Zelensky is that our job is to make sure that opportunities for private capital can come to Ukraine and we get in a fair and just return, and he agreed on that. He agreed on the role of capitalism in his country.
And I told the president that our job is to make sure that the new Ukraine is an open society, open economy, that if they are looking for that type of capital, the capital will be there, and we had many dialogues with them, and we'll have another dialogue with them later today.
If anyone finds the words from BlackRock's CEO reminiscent of George Soros's vision of an open society, they are not mistaken, Tuzfalcsoport adds, noting that these are ominous sentences, because BlackRock is not a charity and does not necessarily want an open society in order to serve the interests of Ukrainians, but rather those of American private capital.
Cover photo: Alex Soros holds talks in Ukraine (Source: X/Alex Soros)
