Ukraine's China problem, and how to solve it

Before taxpayer dollars are spent on Ukraine’s reconstruction, there’s a serious problem: Zelenskyy opened the door to Chinese participation.

Victoria Coates is a senior fellow in international relations and national security at The Heritage Foundation.

Much of this success has been supported by robust military and economic aid from the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Asian allies such as Japan. At war’s end, this will doubtless be followed by investments in and contributions to the sort of modernizing reconstruction Zelenskyy envisions. As he points out, there will be considerable profits to be made in this new Ukraine, especially if the country uses the transition to break the grip of endemic corruption that has bedeviled it for so long.

Those profits should be the purview of Ukraine, as well as the free societies that have been so unstintingly supportive. The United States, for example, has already delivered or pledged $53 billion in aid, with no end in sight. Washington understands the strategic advantage of handing Putin a defeat, but the Biden administration appears to have no idea how to achieve this happy outcome beyond asking for more money from the Congress, which has precious little oversight of how and why it is being spent.