Ukraine proposes creating international consortium to manage strategic logistics hubs
Ukraine could put forward an initiative to create an international consortium to manage logistics hubs important for economic security and geoeconomics, foreign and domestic policy expert Liudmyla Pokrovshchuk said.
"There's a certain proposal… it could be some kind of international consortium for managing these logistics hubs that affect economic security, geoeconomics specifically," Pokrovshchuk said at a press conference titled "Food Security Amid Russian Aggression: Transforming Logistics Chains and Strategic Alternatives" at the Interfax-Ukraine press center on Friday.
Alternative routes need not only to be found but also built up, including on the territory of other countries, so Ukraine can fulfill long-term export contracts and maintain its position on world markets, she said.
Oleksiy Buriachenko, president of the International Institute for Security Studies, stressed the global significance of Ukrainian logistics, saying Ukraine's "solidarity lanes" traditionally supply grain to about 400 million people worldwide, and that Russian strikes on logistics affect not only Ukraine but global prices and food security as well.
"...We need to turn this into tools of global pressure on the Russian Federation, in order to stabilize the Black Sea basin," Buriachenko said.
Yaroslav Zhalilo, doctor of economic sciences and deputy director of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, who also heads its Center for Economic and Social Research, said alternative logistics alone are not enough and a comprehensive state policy is needed.
"It's not enough to just try to build alternative logistics — we need to form what I'd call complementary compensators, that is, at the level of state policies that would support proper adaptation," he said.
Military-political commentator Denys Popovych, meanwhile, said logistics needs to be decentralized to reduce reliance on large warehouses.
"The main tool is decentralization — reforming logistics so it works differently, so instead of concentrating on large warehouses, it's distributed, maybe selling straight off trucks, maybe developing some small enterprise model, where a truck arrives, sells out, and doesn't get concentrated in large warehouses," he said.