With $500 Million Committed So Far, Howard Buffett Stays the Course in Ukraine

Irpin, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine — A student photographed through a hole left by an unexploded russian missile. more than 3,000 schools have been damaged or destroyed since the start of the war. Photo: Howard G. Buffett

Back in June, Howard Buffett stood before the Ukraine Recovery Conference in London and spoke to the urgent need for increased investment, and his own support for a cause he called the clearest distinction between right and wrong he’s encountered in his life.

“One of the advantages I have standing here today is that I don’t answer to any agency,” Buffett told the audience. “I don’t answer to any bureaucracy. I don’t ask anybody for money. And I don’t need approval from a large board. And I’m always taking risks, and I’m always willing to fail.”

These are sentiments philanthropists often use to describe the unique funding role they play, but Buffett has used that freedom to exercise a rare level of commitment and flexibility in Ukraine, which has made his foundation a formidable force in the region’s wartime recovery effort. Since the conflict began in 2022, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation has deployed and committed more than $500 million to the cause. And there are no signs of slowing down — the target for 2024 stands at $300 million.

Contrasting other funding pathways that are subject to the vagaries of the state and the pressures of competing priorities, Buffett’s unique brand of resolve also illustrates the ways philanthropy — when it puts its mind to it — can sustain strategies for the long haul, and quickly pivot when necessary.  

Why the laser-focus on the region? Buffett sees the conflict in Ukraine as the seminal security event in his lifetime, a threat to sovereignty that echoes around the world. Here’s how his foundation’s work to mitigate the fallout has grown to more than a half-billion dollars, while his dedication to the cause has remained unchanged.

Concerted commitment

When IP last spoke to Buffett at the beginning of the year, his foundation had deployed nearly $150 million in Ukraine. That number has since more than doubled to $355 million, with more committed, putting the total amount not all that far behind countries like France.

The foundation’s overall 2023 distributions in Ukraine currently represent roughly 70% of its total giving, alongside ongoing projects in Colombia and Guatemala. Buffett’s funding in the country is unique in its depth and breadth, even for him. But it builds on the donor’s long history of going all-in on specific geographies and causes.

One of Buffett’s largest commitments prior to Ukraine recovery, for example, has been agriculture in Rwanda, including multiple large-scale investments in smallholder farming and irrigation methods.

Another unique trait of Buffett’s giving is his willingness to put his own boots on the ground in the places he funds. A repeat visitor to Ukraine since it was part of the Soviet Union in 1991, he has shown up nine times since the full-scale invasion began in 2022. His next planned visit will be his tenth.

Safety and security

Staying close to the work puts the foundation in a position to change strategies on a dime when the situation warrants. Much of its support, however, has stayed within the lines of the its top three priorities: food security, conflict mitigation and public safety — all areas of expertise boosted by its founder’s background in farming, law and business.

Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine — Residents of Avdiivka, which has endured heavy shelling since the beginning of the invasion, had been living in a basement for months. Photo: Howard G. Buffett

Buffett’s agricultural knowledge continues to inform the foundation’s investments in Ukraine, a country that’s a top-three exporter of grain globally, and often called the world’s breadbasket. But realities on the ground have meant redefining the ideas of security and shifting tactics.

For example, infrastructure is something Buffett had stayed away from, unless it related to other investments or filled a critical gap. Today, it’s a throughline of his support in Ukraine.

Buffett credits the change in mindset to his son, who reminded him of lessons learned through fieldwork they did in Afghanistan in 2010. Watching a Black Hawk helicopter from under a tree, Buffett asked a farmer why they were busy building a school during wartime. “We need a building to keep our kids engaged in education,” the farmer explained.

“People have to see things change even during war or they can’t have any hope,” he said. “The key is to be responsive.”

Food security

The foundation’s food security work similarly illustrates how wartime conditions have impacted funding strategies in a matter of months.

A simple example is its support for the Bucha Central Production Kitchen, a school meals program championed by Ukraine’s First Lady that was originally intended to reach 30 to 40 schools. The Buffett Foundation was an early supporter and helped fund the pilot. Then the security equation changed.

“When we made the commitment to build the kitchen facilities,” said Buffett, “it was well over a year ago. Since then, there has been a new directive that schools must have bomb shelters because of the constant shelling by Russia.” Currently, children cannot attend schools that aren’t equipped with bomb shelters, so most aren’t able to learn in person.

To support its original investment, and “so that children can attend school,” Buffett is currently in discussions to fund the necessary infrastructure. A line item for 2024 is building bomb shelters for the original 31 schools and continuing work that’s now in the design phase to put bomb shelters in a second kitchen facility project it’s funding in Kharkiv.

Emergency food aid

A similar shift can be seen in Buffett’s work with its primary partner on emergency food aid. The number of meals the foundation’s delivered to the front lines has ballooned from 25 million to 132 million, working primarily through the Global Empowerment Mission, or GEM, which has ramped up service considerably in the east, right up to where the fighting occurs.

When GEM identified the larger humanitarian problem of getting Ukrainians to return home, it approached Buffett about replacing the thousands of windows that have been blown out by shelling — improvements that would make buildings habitable and “get more people back home faster.”

After objecting at first, Buffett decided to listen to “his staff of smart people for a minute,” and came around. Between February and September 2023, the project installed more than 48,000 window panels in residential buildings, hospitals and shelters deemed livable by the Ukrainian government through an investment of $9 million. A newer grant of $11.2 million will cover the purchase and installation of an additional 33,000-55,000 window panels, bringing the total funding to $20.2 million. 

Food as a weapon of war

The foundation also responded as food security became a weapon of war.

In July 2022, a Black Sea Grain deal brokered by the U.N. and Turkey opened a sea lane to carry tons of grains to the waiting world — and especially to developing countries. Buffett Foundation funding provided the first two humanitarian shipments of grain to Ethiopia and Yemen, a $22.6 million commitment that funded 60 metric tons of grain and covered logistical costs through the World Food Program and USAID.   

The deal expired a year later, driven by Russian ambitions that include supplanting Ukraine as a wheat supplier. That and other moves prompted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and members of the U.N. Security Council to warn Russia against using food as a weapon, a statement supported by 91 countries.

Buffett’s main concern is who the actions hurt. “People don’t always connect the dots,” he said. “Drop down and look at the countries impacted” — some of the poorest places on the planet. The war is impacting global food security in areas that are already destabilized, like areas of Africa that saw a 50% increase in mortality rates in 2022, creating a wedge of hunger that Buffett said can be used by local militias as a recruiting tool.

The foundation will also engage in nearly $3.5 million in funding to combat war crimes against agriculture this year, and is particularly active in demining efforts to reclaim land for Ukrainian farmers.

Buffett said the foundation has brought in about $10 million in demining equipment, machines that cost more than $1 million a piece. Another $22 million in bulldozers are in the pipeline. But they’re not just any bulldozers. Buffett’s tapping the expertise of HALO and the Foundation Suisse de Deminage or FSD, on innovations to create a dual demining and plowing utility that may help attract funding. Once the design is adopted, the equipment will be manufactured in Ukraine by the Kharkiv Tractor Company, a state-owned business.

All-in on infrastructure

Food security has also led to other moves in funding infrastructure. For example, Buffett backed a rebuilding effort when an emergency email reported that one of the primary bridges to get grain out of a Ukainian port was destroyed.

Its partner on that was the Conflict and Development Foundation, with which it’s been working on infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, Rwanda, El Salvador and Colombia since 2010. CDF acts as the foundation’s representative on projects, helps identity engineers and architects, and provides design. They then then bid out the projects, review all bids, and follow construction through to completion. Buffett credits the organization with doing an “amazing job” protecting investments and insuring transparency in challenging circumstances.

Willingness to fail and to succeed

Buffett said he’s confident the foundation will be funding demining, agriculture and food security next year. And to get things right, he’s not afraid of taking risks, even if that means failing at times.

He said the $33 million he spent on farm feed and fertilizer in 2022-23 is not something he’d “do again for a couple of reasons,” after distribution costs became extremely high per farmer.

Even in the face of shifting public sentiments in the U.S., expect Buffett to stay the course in Ukraine as a clear and present matter of democracy.

Of the overall global response, Buffett said, “At times, it’s been timid. We’ve been helpful, but we’ve been slow. For those who have not made commitments, step up now when Ukraine needs the investments and support. There is no time to look back. Because what we do now will change the course of history. And we have to be on the right side of history.”