Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky, is using his ongoing charm offensive of world leaders to hit Russia in their pockets.
This time he directed his charge for a boycott of Russia to business leaders.
Speaking at the 2022 staging of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Zelensky urged world leaders to boycott Russian businesses.
He went a step further by calling on those businesses that abandon Russia to set up shop in Ukraine.
He warned the leaders of industry not to continue to fund the Russian war chest.
The Russia/Ukraine conflict dominated the events at the forum.
The forum protested the invasion by barring Russian officials and business leaders.
This was the first time that over 30 global leaders, titans of industry academics and NGO’s could caucus to discuss global issues at the powerful think tank.
The forum focused on discussions for solutions for the Russo- Ukrainian War, post pandemic recovery, the global food crisis, increased energy vulnerabilities and cyber security.
There was widespread consensus that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was likely to be a new long term reality for global security and countries particularly in Europe must now review their national security policies and find new alternatives to Russian energy.
Meanwhile, Director General of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said that the evacuation of 25 million tons of grain in Ukraine is a matter of global urgency as she foresees a worsening food crisis for the coming years due to fertilizer shortages caused by Russian blockades on Ukrainian ships transporting grains which is a raw material in fertilizer and animal feed.
She is calling for the immediate establishment of corridors to escort the massive reserves of grains and the upcoming harvest in the early summer.
The first female head of the WTO said that the organisation is pursuing multiple strategies to ease the blow of the crisis such as working to have countries to ease export restrictions to not exacerbate the crisis.
The WTO head says that they are focused on supporting developing countries particularly those in Africa to produce more to become more self sufficient.
She underscored the need for a world food security agreement and warned that moves away from multilateral approaches to bilateral and nationalistic approaches will lead to a greater global human security issues.
European Commissioner for Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis told the forum that the EU will prioritise providing military assistance for the safe passage of Ukrainian ships transporting agro-goods to Europe.
He described Russia as an aggressor and reaffirmed the EU position that Ukraine should receive support both militarily and economically to sustain its political and economic survival as a state while making all deliberate effort not to escalate the conflict.
Ceo of Global Logistics Firm, Flexport , Ryan Petersen warned that large food importation dependent
countries may be on the verge of political and economic crisis due to rising inflation and hunger.
He warned that from a logitics perspective China must play be meaningfully engaged as they influence in the global supply chain is highly consequential.
He argued that China must improve its output and fully resume its freight industry in order for us to see significant improvements in the global goods supply.
The forum saw many problem solving presentations which placed great emphasis on global stakeholder cooperation and the use of technology to offset the economic pervasive economic fallout from the pandemic and the subsequent Russian Attack on the Ukraine.
