Reparations: What will Russia owe Ukraine?

Evil-doers should pay for their evil. By this logic, Russia will owe Ukraine huge sums to compensate for death and destruction — not just for damage done in the recent weeks and years, but over the past century.  

Reparations are not some new invention. France paid other Europeans huge sums to compensate for the damage done by Napoleon. A century later, France and the United Kingdom demanded that Germany pay for the deaths and destruction caused by Kaiser Wilhelm’s forces in World War I. The Soviet Union demanded reparations from Adolf Hitler’s Germany and took what they could get from East Germany.

Furthermore, the past is not necessarily the past. Indigenous peoples and descendants of slaves in the Americas rightly demand compensation for the evils perpetrated by whites in Europe and the North. Jamaicans now take their complaints directly to Britain’s royal family. Universities — Glasgow, Georgetown, Brown and others — recognize that their founding and survival were funded by slavery. How can whites make up for past cruelty and injustice from which they benefited? When Britain banned slavery in the 19th century, it compensated slave owners for loss of property. But what about those who suffered and died as slaves — and their descendants?

On March 18, 2022, Ukraine’s prime minister estimated that Ukraine will need at least $575 billion to rebuild what Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces destroyed in just three weeks — ignoring the 19th century architectural gems that defy duplication. But what about compensation for deaths and injury? The U.S. government estimates that the value of every life is nearly $10 million. If costs are lower in Ukraine, let’s say each life there is worth at least $5 million. If at least 10,000 Ukrainians have perished so far, the compensation would be at least $50 billion. Physical and emotional wounds can be worse than death — easily worth another $50 billion. What about loss of GDP? In 2020, Ukraine’s GDP grew by about $2 billion. If it now loses $2 billion in growth for each of the next five years, that adds up to $10 billion.

Taken together, these estimates reach nearly $700 billion caused by Putin’s forces in less than one month. If fighting on this scale continues for another two or three months, the total damage will exceed $1.5 trillion — a sum equal to Russia’s gross national product in 2020. Some losses defy calculation: How to pay for trauma in children who no longer speak and miss school and social development? How to value environmental degradation from munitions and fires that poison water, air and soil? Elderly Ukrainians feel helpless when they look at the mounds of vodka bottles and other trash left by departing Russians.   

What about Ukrainian losses caused by Soviet forces in previous decades? At least 1 million died in 1918-1921 as the Red Army fought Ukrainians struggling for independence from Russian rule. At least 4 million Ukrainians starved to death from Joseph Stalin’s policies in the 1930s. Soviet police in 1941 massacred 10,000 to 40,000 prisoners in Ukrainian jails. Stalin’s inept policies toward Hitler led to 30 million to 40 million Soviet deaths in 1940-1941—more than 3 million of them Ukrainian.

Nikita Khrushchev administered Ukraine during a post-war famine that killed another million Ukrainians — a time when Moscow intensified its repression of Ukrainian culture. No wonder that, when I stood with crowds to watch Khrushchev, by then First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, drive in a limousine down a main street in Kyiv in 1960, all the faces were sullen. No one waved or cheered. No one booed — that would be too dangerous. But resentment and repressed anger were nearly tangible.

Thus, before the Putin era, more than 5 million to 6 million Ukrainians died unnatural deaths thanks to Kremlin policies. If their lives were valued at a mere $1million each, that would add more trillions of dollars to what the Kremlin or all of Russia owes Ukraine.  

How could Russia pay these staggering sums? There are some positive prospects because Russia continues to sell oil and gas. Bloomberg Economics predicts that Russia will earn $321 billion from energy exports this year — more than a third more than in 2021. The Institute of International Finance estimates Russia’s current account surplus will rise to a record $240 billion. The steep ruble depreciation, combined with a higher price for oil, will generate an extra 8.5 trillion rubles ($103 billion) in budget revenue this year. These inflows could meet private demand for foreign exchange and allow Moscow to ease capital controls.

On the other hand, sanctions probably will cause Russia’s GDP — now smaller than Italy’s or Spain’s — to continue shrinking. There may be $1 trillion of Russian government and oligarch assets now frozen in the West. If there is ever peace in Ukraine, however, Western governments and banks may not be allowed to keep and distribute these assets without Russian permission. For now, neither the Russian government nor most of its people acknowledge the unjustified harm Russians are causing in Ukraine. Like Germans in the 1920s, most Russians are likely to repudiate any war debt.

That Russia is guilty of crimes against humanity and obligated to huge reparations to Ukraine is clear. Neither of these debts can be addressed unless the Putin regime is replaced by a liberal government backed by an ashamed but awakened citizenry — changes similar to those that took place in West Germany after 1945 and the Nuremberg war trials. This transformation was feasible only because Hitler was dead and defeated. Since nobody is attacking Putin’s Russia, a West German denouement seems a remote possibility.  

An April 4 broadcast by Timofei Sergeitsev on RIA News told listeners “What Russia must do in Ukraine.” Russia does not need a Ukraine that is a tool of the West, ready to mount a blitzkrieg against Russia, said Sergeitsev. It is wrong to say that Ukraine’s government is bad but the people innocent, he said. He asserted that most Ukrainians and their leaders need “denazification” so they cannot continue genocide in the Donbas region. Such is the propaganda that Putin’s regime has put forth within Russia.

For now, Russia’s damage to its sister nation continues, adding to the vast sums owed to Ukrainians. The West may help with another “Marshall Plan,” but the weightiest obligations are Russia’s.

Walter C. Clemens is an associate with the Harvard University Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and professor emeritus of political science at Boston University. His books include “Baltic Independence and Russian Empire” and “Can Russia Change?”