Buffett, who has visited Ukraine 22 times, distributed 450 million meals and put more than $1bn of his foundation’s funds into resilience and reconstruction in the war-ravaged country, said the conflict has repercussions across the globe and everyone can learn from the bravery and ingenuity of Ukraine’s people.
Speaking as he accepted the 2025 CEPA Impact Award for his humanitarian work in the country before and since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, he said US leaders have failed to explain to Americans why support for Ukraine is vital for global security.
“This war is our war, so [making sure] the American public understands the significance of this war and the consequences of this war is so important,” he told the October 8 awards dinner in Washington. “This is not going to end well unless this country and European countries act faster and stand up and become braver, and show more courage.”
Buffet said his foundation’s work in the rest of the world had shown the global impact of the war, and the effect on food security for people thousands of miles from Ukraine. He recalled meeting a small-scale farmer in Rwanda who told him Russian aggression had pushed up grain prices in the central African country.
Ukraine has long been regarded as the breadbasket of Europe, and Buffet’s foundation has worked closely with farmers to help restore agricultural productivity.
“The impact of what Russia did and is doing to Ukrainian agriculture will continue to be felt for a long time,” he said. “One of the biggest challenges will be demining agricultural fields, and we’ve been very engaged in that. That’s one of the most important things we can do in terms of contributing to the economy in the future.”
He said the experience of working in a country at war had been very different from his foundation’s other philanthropy and he had learned from Ukrainians’ courage, tenacity and ingenuity during his visits.
“I’ve had to learn to listen better, I’ve had to make adjustments in my mindset and my thinking,” he said. “We do things in Ukraine we wouldn’t do anywhere else. We built a major bridge. We don’t build bridges anywhere. But there was a need for that at the time, and we did it.”
Working in a “real war” has meant learning and reacting faster than in other situations, he said, and there aren’t any straightforward templates for aid agencies to follow.
“During a war, you don’t have the luxury of trying to take the time to figure things out. You don’t have the luxury of building relationships. You have to learn very quickly who you can trust, who you can believe,” he said. “War accelerates everything, and you don’t know what’s around the corner.”
He said he had seen extraordinary acts of heroism at the front, but spoke particularly about Ukraine’s women who have sacrificed so much since the full-scale invasion.
“They have put aside their families, their children, their careers, because they know that if they don’t do what they need to do now, their country will not survive,” he said. “The world is not watching as closely as they need to be watching because we could learn so much from the Ukrainian people.”
Thomas Penny is an editor and writer based in London. He has worked for local, national, and international news organizations, including the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg News, and CEPA, and is now a freelance specializing in international relations, politics, and conflict.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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