Ukraine reconstruction estimate jumps 12% to $588bn, World Bank says

Rebuilding Ukraine’s economy will cost an estimated $588bn over the next decade, the World Bank, UN, European Commission and the Ukrainian government said on Monday, a day before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The latest assessment by the institutions, based on data from February 24 2022 through to December 31 2025, showed a 12% increase from last year’s estimate, based in part on a 21% jump in damaged or destroyed energy infrastructure from a year ago. The study does not include data from Russia’s intensified attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities in January and February, which have left tens of thousands across Ukraine without heat, power and water during the coldest winter on record in decades.

The estimate, the fifth conducted since the start of the war, found direct damage in Ukraine had reached $195bn, up nearly 11% from the previous assessment, with housing, transport and energy sectors most affected, the groups said. That is more than double the damage reported in the first report in 2022. “The damage is immense and increasing continuously,” the report said, noting that damages were concentrated in frontline areas and metropolitan areas including the capital Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has faced sustained pressure from US President Donald Trump to agree to a ceasefire deal that could entail painful concessions of land captured by Russian forces. But talks between Russia and Ukraine in Geneva last week failed to produce a breakthrough. The war, which will enter a fifth year this week, has triggered the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two, with more than 6-million Ukrainians living as refugees outside the country, and 4.6-million more displaced inside its borders, as of December 2025, the report notes.

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It has also taken a huge toll on Ukraine’s economy, with its GDP now 21% smaller in real terms than in 2021, before the Russian invasion. If the war continues this year, Ukraine’s GDP growth is seen limited to around 2%, but growth could pick up modestly to 4% in 2027 and 4.5% in 2028 if a ceasefire was in place by the end of the year. “Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, the total cost of Ukraine’s reconstruction and recovery is now estimated at nearly $588bn over the next decade, nearly three times the country’s projected nominal GDP for 2025,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said in a statement.

“Amid unprecedented Russian attacks on energy infrastructure and homes across Ukraine this winter, our people show resilience, our entrepreneurs keep working. We still manage to recover fast and develop further,” she said. Damages have been highest in the housing sector, with 14% of total housing stock damaged or destroyed, or about $61bn, followed by the railways and other parts of the transport sector, amounting to $40.3bn in damages, the report said.

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