Warren Buffett's son, others explain why helping Ukraine is good for Erie, America

Businessman and philanthropist Howard G. Buffett, the middle child of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, led a series of conversations in Erie Wednesday about the importance of bolstering support for war-torn Ukraine as Russia's assault on the nation nears the two-and-a-half-year mark.

Buffett didn't mince words during an interview with the Erie Times-News editorial board, saying that adversaries like Iran and North Korea are supporting the Russian invasion not simply to take over Ukraine, but to weaken the West.

"They want to weaken the United States," Buffett said. "And China wants to take the number one position in the world in terms of the economy. And so everything is designed to weaken the United States, to reduce our freedom and undermine our democracy.

"If we don't help Ukraine win this war now," he continued, "It becomes our war."

The Howard G. Buffett Foundation partnered with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a nonpartisan public policy think tank that focuses on U.S. and European Union relations, and the Farm Journal to launch a multi-state "Whistlestops for Ukraine" tour to drum up support for Ukraine in primarily agriculturally rich areas of the country.

Erie was selected in large part because of the connection the groups had made with Erie-based Logistics Plus founder Jim Berlin.

Local efforts to support Ukraine

Logistics Plus and another Erie-based company, Vorex, moved $100 million of gas pipe from China to Ukraine to help Ukraine and the European Union break its reliance on Russian natural gas supplies. They moved 22,000 tons of drill and casing pipe on four ships and 1,000 trucks over and eight-month period that coincided with typhoon season in the Sea of China and congestion at a Romanian port. The final shipment happened in January and was the first non-grain product to enter the port of Chornomorsk since the invasion began.

The company also raised $660,000 for relief efforts.

The group was surprised to learn how many other Erie entities have ties to Ukraine.

"In the four stops that we've already accomplished, today's conversation with the business community, I thought, was one of the richest because so many of them had already invested in (Ukraine)," said Heather A. Conley, president of the German Marshall Fund. "That is fantastic that there's already that engagement."

Buffett said President Joe Biden's administration does not have the proper strategy to help Ukraine win the war. He added that he doesn't know what former President Donald Trump would do to resolve the war if elected in November.

He noted that there is a misperception among many in the American public that funding to support Ukraine is going directly to the country, when in fact much of it is going to scores of American manufacturers, like the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, and even to the local Wabtec plant, which is supplying 40 diesel locomotives to the country through a $156 million Export-Import Bank loan.

Impact on agriculture

Buffett's foundation, he said, has largely focused on issues of food security and conflict mitigation. Its worked in 44 countries in Africa and most of Central and South America. It had never worked in Ukraine prior to the invasion.

"We went to Ukraine in April of 2022 to understand the issues better and never looked back," Buffett said, noting that his foundation went from investing more than $250 million annually in food security issues to more than $500 million because of its support for Ukraine.

Russia has weaponized food, said Kateryna Smagliy, first secretary of public & cultural diplomacy at the Embassy of Ukraine in the U.S.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's destruction of Ukraine's Odesa seaport was intended to cut off Ukraine's grain exports to other countries. That's crippled its economy and its ability to feed people across Europe and the globe.

"Putin is repeating history again, because that's exactly what Stalin did in 1932," Samgliy said.

Russia is stealing grain from Ukraine to pay for the war. Ukraine is the ninth largest producer of wheat and fifth largest exporter. Nearly a third of the wheat it produced last year, said Buffett, came from Russian-occupied areas of the country.

"If you look at just the impact that Russia has had on agriculture and Ukrainian farmers, it's huge, just huge," Buffett said.

Conley said Russia will not stop at Ukraine and that the U.S. must adopt a different mindset about its support for Ukraine to stop Putin.

'A national understanding'

"This is the difference in mindset," she said. "Russia has decided they're in a full-war economy. Everything is weaponized. Food is weaponized. Religion is weaponized. Migrants are weaponized. Energy is weaponized. Ukraine now is gearing toward a total-war economy, preserving its strength, everything going for the war effort.

"The United States and our partners are not even close," she continued. "It's a mindset. We have to understand what is at stake. You have to gear your strategy and your economy to what needs to be done to win. That's what's missing. And that can't be just one political leader or one political party. It has to be a national understanding of what is at stake. And that's very difficult."

Matthew Rink can be reached at mrink@timesnews.com or on X at @ETNRink.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Ukraine advocates explain how Erie businesses help war efforts