Howard Buffett on the war in Ukraine, aid, and recovery

That's an exaggeration, but anyway, thank you.

Well, thank you.

Well, our foundation is focused primarily — I mean, our two largest areas are conflict mitigation and food security. So immediately when the full-scale invasion occurred, it was clear that it was a conflict, and it was clear it would have a big impact on food security, being a country that, you know, I mean, a lot of people would refer to it as a breadbasket of Europe. But the way I would have viewed it was a huge supplier and a critical supplier to food supplies for like the World Food Program and other emergency relief agencies. So I knew it would have an impact, and I felt like I — and I was very — I was in Ukraine in 1991, in January. It was still part of the Soviet Union. That's the extent of my experience. So I felt like I should get over here and start to understand the lay of the land. It took me a little bit. I got here in April, first week in April of 2022. And part of that delay was just we hadn't worked in Europe, we hadn't worked in Ukraine. We've spent our time in Africa and Central America, South America. So it took a little time to get here, but as soon as I got here and hit the ground, it was clear the scale of what was already occurring. And who could have imagined that four years later it would be where it's at? I certainly couldn't have imagined it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I wish I could have gotten to Bucha at that time, but I didn't get there. I was still learning the ground. I mean, I was still trying to figure out who can we work with, who do we trust, you know, who's going to be helpful. So I missed out on that part in terms of — which was, you know, amazing because everybody had predicted something very different, and Ukraine had obviously proved them wrong. So it was a pretty significant time, and it was a pretty amazing thing to — not that I was there personally, but to just even watch it on a TV screen to see what Ukraine was able to accomplish against Russia was just — I mean, it should have prepared people that we could be fighting five years later, four years later going into the fifth year. I don't think it did. I don't think anybody expected it.

I think probably after the second year going into the third year, when you started to see changes in external support, you saw some challenges militarily on the Ukraine side, and Putin became — it was very clear that he had no interest in doing anything other than carrying out everything that he said he wanted to do, which would really in essence be taking all of Ukraine, certainly replacing the current government in Kyiv with a Russian government basically. It was just clear he was not going to stop.

He's not going to stop. No. Until he has to.