Ukraine needs $7bn in aid a month, Zelensky says

Ukraine’s president has told the world’s finance ministers that his country needs $7bn (£5.4bn) every month until the summer to keep functioning.

Volodymyr Zelensky also said “we will need hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild all this later”.

He was addressing an International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank conference via video link from Kyiv.

Mr Zelensky also said the global community needed to exclude Russia immediately from international financial institutions, including the World Bank, IMF and others.

All countries “must immediately be prepared to break up all relations with Russia,” he added.

Asked whether the IMF would be able to secure the immediate funding that Ukraine needs, the organisation’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva told BBC economics editor Faisal Islam: “We found it for the first and second month.

“We believe that over time this amount is going to go down as the Ukrainian economy in the parts of the country that are not under occupation picks up, and as remittances from those who now work somewhere else start flowing.”