By Simon Jessop and Olena Harmash

LONDON (Reuters) -Ukraine is seeking up to $40 billion to fund the first part of a “Green Marshall Plan” to rebuild its economy, including developing a coal-free steel industry, a senior Ukrainian official said ahead of an international summit.

Politicians and financiers will discuss short-term funding issues as well as look at long-term reconstruction efforts at the two-day meeting, starting in London on Wednesday and co-hosted by Ukraine and Britain.

It is expected to launch a “war risk” insurance scheme to cover companies that begin investing in Ukraine again and see government officials discuss behind the scenes if and how to use frozen Russian assets to fund some of the rebuild effort.

The World Bank estimates Ukraine’s reconstruction will cost more than $400 billion, three times the country’s gross domestic product. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, external backers have poured $59 billion into Ukraine to support it during the war.

Giving the figure of $40 billion for an initial phase of reconstruction, Rostyslav Shurma, a deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, told Reuters the first focus would be the iron and steel industry.

The sector contributed around 10% of Ukrainian GDP in 2021, a third of export revenues and employed around 600,000 people. It also accounted for 15% of the country’s carbon emissions and Shurma said there was now an opportunity to build an industry driven by renewable energy.

“If you have to rebuild, it is logical to rebuild green in line with new technologies … Our vision is to build a 50 million tonnes green steel industry in Ukraine,” he said.

Doing so would allow the country to become the world’s cheapest supplier of so-called “green” steel – made without the use of fossil fuels – and a major support to Europe’s efforts to decarbonise, driven by an investment push in new wind, solar, nuclear and hydro power.

RUSSIAN ASSETS

Many of the country’s damaged legacy steel plants were built in locations that suited their reliance on coal as a power source, but they were now free to build closer to the iron ore deposits and away from the Donbas region, Shurma said.

Moscow last year claimed the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which make up the broader Donbas region, as “republics” of Russia, in a move condemned by most members of the United Nations as illegal.

To help raise $20 billion to $40 billion in initial funding, Ukraine plans a coalition of industry, public and private sector stakeholders to develop the plan, including doing initial scoping work on projects.

Preparatory work would likely take 1-1/2 years although “to be realistic, actual construction will start only after the war” is over, Shurma said.

Officials from over 60 countries are expected to attend the conference, as will the top global multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, European Investment Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development bank that are being asked to ramp up their lending.

Shurma said funding would be a blend of finance from export credit agencies in other countries; concessional funding handled through the Ukrainian Development Fund it is setting up with asset manager BlackRock; equity of the operating companies; EU transition funding; and private sector loans.

Matteo Patrone, a managing director at the EBRD, said it was crucial to put the focus on the need for private sector involvement.

Multilateral lenders like the EBRD and World Bank will increase their roles too – in order to encourage the private sector – by providing the new “war risk insurance” schemes on behalf of their G7 and other shareholder governments.

The thorny issue of using the estimated $300 billion of frozen Russian central bank reserves is also expected to be discussed by government officials and bankers, although no firm steps to are likely to be announced at this stage.

U.S. lawmakers from both the Republican and the Democratic parties introduced a bill on Thursday that would make it easier for Ukraine to fund its fight against Russia by using seized and frozen Russian assets.

(AdditionaL reporting by Marc Jones and Jorgelina do Rosario; Editing by Elisa Martinuzzi, Frances Kerry and Alison Williams)

By Dmitriy Turlyun

MELEKHOVO, Russia (Reuters) -The trial of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on new charges of “extremism” will take place behind closed doors, a court spokesman said on Monday.

The decision means media will be excluded from proceedings against President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent and vocal opponent that could extend his prison term by decades.

It was announced at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 235 km (145 miles) east of Moscow, where Navalny is already serving sentences totalling 11-1/2 years on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up to silence him.

Journalists were not allowed into the room where the trial was taking place, but were initially given access to a video feed with barely intelligible audio.

The feed was later halted, and the court spokesman said there would be no more media access.

Prosecutors had raised unspecified security concerns, saying they had received evidence about a planned “provocation”.

Navalny supporters were dismissive.

“What can be more secure than a strict-regime penal colony where no one is even allowed into the hall?” his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh tweeted.

On the video feed at the start of the hearing, Navalny, looking thin with cropped hair and dressed in a black prison uniform, was seen standing and speaking for three minutes.

He unsuccessfully demanded access to the courtroom for his parents, and contested the authority of the Moscow city court judge to try him in a penal colony far from the capital.

Navalny’s supporters accuse Moscow of trying to break him in prison, where he has been placed for long spells in solitary confinement, to silence his criticism of Putin.

The Kremlin denies persecuting Navalny and says his case is a matter for the courts. “We are not following this trial,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Navalny, who is able to post on social media through his lawyers and allies, appealed on Instagram to Russians to “join forces in the fight against Putin’s lies and Kremlin hypocrisy”.

“Putin is afraid of any word of truth,” he said.

A statement on his website continued: “We will conduct an election campaign against war. And against Putin. Just that. A long, stubborn, exhausting but fundamentally important campaign where we will turn people against the war.”

Russia’s next presidential election is due in 2024, and Putin has yet to confirm whether he will stand.

(Reporting by Reuters; writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

BANGKOK (Reuters) -Thailand on Monday justified hosting talks aimed at re-engaging with Myanmar’s shunned military, saying dialogue was necessary to protect its border with the strife-torn country, even as top diplomats of key Southeast Asian neighbours stayed away.

Myanmar’s generals have been barred from high-level meetings of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) since they seized power in a 2021 coup and unleashed violence on those who challenged their takeover.

But Thailand’s outgoing military-backed government invited ASEAN foreign ministers, including that of Myanmar, to discuss a proposal for the bloc to “fully re-engage Myanmar at the leaders’ level”, according to an invitation seen by Reuters and verified by sources.

Critics see the meeting as undermining a unified ASEAN approach to the Myanmar crisis, centred on a peace plan agreed with the junta two years ago. But Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, himself a former coup leader, said direct talks were necessary to protect his country.

“We suffer more than others because Thailand has more than 3,000-km shared land border as well as a maritime border,” Prayuth told reporters. “That is why the talks are necessary. It is not about taking sides.”

His foreign minister, Don Pramudwinai, earlier said Myanmar’s crisis was creating refugees problems and hitting trade hard.

“We can say that Thailand is the only country in ASEAN that wants to see the problems end as soon as possible,” he told broadcaster Thai PBS.

Other ASEAN countries “should be thanking us,” he said.

Myanmar’s junta-appointed foreign minister, Than Swe, was due to join the talks, two sources with knowledge of the meeting told Reuters.

According to two other knowledgeable sources, the foreign ministers of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia did not attend, with some sending junior representation.

Other than Myanmar and host Thailand, Laos was the only country to send its top diplomat, they said.

‘NO CONSENSUS TO RE-ENGAGE’

Indonesia as ASEAN chair has for months been trying to advance the peace process by engaging key stakeholders in Myanmar’s conflict.

Its foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, said ASEAN had “arrived at no consensus to re-engage or develop new approaches to the Myanmar issue”, according to a letter seen by Reuters and verified by a source.

The military took over in Myanmar in 1962 and suppressed all opposition for decades until it launched a tentative opening up in 2011. But its experiment with democracy, which included elections swept by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, came to end when the military ousted her government and crushed pro-democracy protests.

With Myanmar again drawing Western condemnation and sanctions, ASEAN drew up a five-point peace plan, including an end to violence, humanitarian access and dialogue involving all stakeholders, but Myanmar’s generals have not delivered, frustrating the bloc.

Malaysia’s foreign ministry in a statement said it was important for ASEAN demonstrates unity in support of Indonesia’s effort.

Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, told a press conference in Singapore with his U.S. counterpart last week that it was “premature to re-engage with the junta” at a high level. It was not immediately clear on Monday if an official from Singapore was attending the talks in Thailand.

An organisation of Southeast Asian lawmakers, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, called the talks a “betrayal of the Myanmar people and an affront to ASEAN unity”.

(Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um and Devjyot Ghoshal in Bangkok, Ananda Teresia in Jakarta, Rozanna Latiff in Kuala Lumpur; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Kay Johnson, Robert Birsel, Martin Petty and Alistair Bell)

By Lefteris Papadimas and Karolina Tagaris

KALAMATA, Greece (Reuters) -A Syrian teenager who survived a shipwreck that killed at least 78 people off Greece was emotionally reunited with his elder brother on Friday, but there was no news for other relatives searching for loved ones.

Witness accounts suggested between 400 and 750 people had packed the 20- to 30 metre-long (65- to 100-foot) fishing boat that capsized and sank early on Wednesday morning about 50 miles (80 km) from the southern coastal town of Pylos.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster 104 survivors and 78 people who drowned were brought to shore by Greek authorities, but nothing has been found since.

A massive search and rescue operation continued on Friday, but hopes were dwindling of finding any more survivors from the hundreds of people believed to have been on board the boat when it sank in some of the deepest waters of the Mediterranean.

Most of the people on board were from Egypt, Syria and Pakistan, government officials have said.

Early on Friday survivor Mohammad, 18, from Syria, burst into sobs as he spotted his elder brother Fadi, who had travelled from the Netherlands searching for him.

They wept and hugged through metal barricades, erected by Greek police around a warehouse in Kalamata where survivors had been sleeping for the past two days.

“Thank God for your safety,” Fadi said, repeatedly kissing his younger sibling on the head.

About 25 other relatives gathered outside the Kalamata shelter, hoping for news, clasping screenshots of their loved ones on mobiles phones.

Most of the survivors, 71 people, were transferred on Friday by bus to the migrant camp of Malakasa, a gated facility with barbed wire fencing 40 km (25 miles) outside Athens. They were expected to apply for asylum.

Adil Hussain was searching for his brother, who had lived for 12-14 years in Greece undocumented and had returned to Pakistan. After two years of living in poverty there, he decided to make the journey to Italy.

“A friend of my brother’s is here. I want to ask where my brother is. I spoke to him last Friday, he said we’re leaving Libya tonight,” said Hussain who lives in Greece.

Anwar Bakri, Secretary General of the Syrian Association of Greece, was also standing outside the camp. He said he had received “hundreds of calls” from people in Germany, in Turkey and other countries, who feared their Syrian relatives were on the sunken boat.

“It’s a tragedy,” he said. “I have numerous photos, at least 15 photos until now, of missing people, young children, 16 year-olds, 20 year-olds, 25 year-olds, whose parents are looking for them,” Bakri said.

“From what I was told, there are no women. All the women died, they sank, they drowned with their children in their arms.”

MIGRANTS HAD PAID $4,500

Pope Francis, who visited Greece two years ago to draw attention to the plight of refugees, urged for measures to prevent similar incidents in the future.

“I feel great pain at the death of the migrants, including many children, in the shipwreck in the Aegean Sea,” he said on Twitter. “We must do everything possible so that migrants fleeing war and poverty do not meet death while seeking a future of hope.”

The ageing fishing vessel was thought to have departed from Egypt, then picked up passengers in the Libyan coastal city of Tobruk on June 10. Greek authorities say survivors have told them they paid $4,500 each to go to Italy.

The exact circumstances of the vessel sinking while it was being shadowed by the Greek coastguard are still unclear.

Authorities, who were alerted by Italy on Tuesday and subsequently monitored the vessel over a period of 15 hours before it sank, say occupants on the vessel repeatedly refused Greek help, saying they wanted to go to Italy.

An advocacy group that had been in communication with the vessel said that on at least two occasions persons on board pleaded for help. The group, Alarm Phone, said it had alerted Greek authorities and aid agencies hours before the disaster unfolded.

‘CURRENT APPROACH UNWORKABLE’

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nation’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, said the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean was the worst in several years and urged states to address the gaps in search and rescue rules.

“It is clear, that the current approach to the Mediterranean is unworkable,” IOM’s Federico Soda. “Year after year, it continues to be the most dangerous migration route in the world, with the highest fatality rate.”

Greek authorities denied accounts that surfaced late on Thursday that the boat flipped after the coastguard attempted to tow it.

“There was no effort to tug the boat,” coastguard spokesman Nikos Alexiou told state broadcaster ERT.

Nine Egyptians, aged between 20 and 40 years, were arrested over the shipwreck on Thursday evening. Authorities said they faced charges of negligent manslaughter, exposing lives to danger, causing a shipwreck and human trafficking.

They were expected to appear before a judge and respond to the accusations in the coming days.

Under a conservative government in power until last month, Greece took a tough stance on migration, building walled camps and boosting border controls.

The country is currently governed by a caretaker administration pending an election on June 25.

(Additional reporting by Stelios Misinas in Kalamata, Renee Maltezou and Michele Kambas in Athens, Federico Maccioni in Milan, Alvise Armellini in Rome; Editing by Alex Richardson)