Ukraine has ‘suffered £70 BILLION in infrastructure damage’ in just nine weeks of war

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The cost of rebuilding Ukraine after invading Russians laid waste to parts of the country now stands at over £70billion ($88billion), a Ukrainian university has claimed. 

As of April 26, the total amount of documented direct infrastructure damage to Ukraine stood at £70.3 billion ($87.9 billion) with large amounts of residential buildings and roads in particular destroyed by Russian forces, according to the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE).

The damage has been verified as part of an open-source data campaign by the KSE to document the damage done by the invasion as part of its ‘Russia Must Pay’ series 

The Kyiv School of Economics was supported by Volodymyr Zelensky‘s government – included his Presidential Office, Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Infrastructure.

The research shows the direct damage to Ukrainian infrastructure – but also estimates the knock-on effect of the war on Ukraine’s GDP – compounded by loss of investment, a labour exodus and defence costs at between £448 billion ($564 billion) and £478 billion ($600 billion).

The cost of the damages to roads and residential buildings account for the bulk of the large amount of money that will be necessary to rebuild Ukraine.

Over 23,000 kilometres (14,000 miles) of road has been damaged so far to the tune of £23.6 billion worth of damage.

Damage on residential building have been some of the most gruesome that have come out of the conflict as civilians could be seen being targeted by the Russian fire in their homes. 

Over 40 per cent of the 37,000 square meters of real estate were damaged, destroyed or seized.residential building losses are in the Donetsk region, with Kharkiv (23 per cent) and Chernihiv (12 per cent) also badly affected.

Russian attacks have also dealt out damage on 173 industrial sites in Ukraine – with the most notorious attack coming on the steelworks in Mariupol where civilians were trapped inside while Russian fire rained down on them.

Education in Ukraine will likely suffer without the investment that is being asked for – as 1401 schools, universities and kindergartens damaged by Putin’s war machine in Ukraine in the first two months of the war.

The damage was not contained to infrastructure either, with 95 religious buildings also bearing the brunt of Russian bombs and artillery.

A majority of the damage to infrastructure was done in the heavily targeted regions in the east of the country.

Putin’s initial justification for the war was a ‘so-called’ denazification of the eastern parts of the country.

The region has been under heavier attack because of its proximity to Russian territory – allowing troops to rearm without fear of significant reprisals.

Boris Johnson vowed a ‘new Marshall Plan’ to rebuild Ukraine in the aftermath of Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on March 9, after Volodymyr Zelensky invoked Churchill in a defiant and emotional address to British MPs in which he repeated his plea for a no-fly zone.

Britain’s prime minister promised to ‘protect’ and ‘restore’ Ukraine’s freedom, sovereignty and independence as he warned: ‘The level of disgust and outrage at what is happening in Ukraine is mounting around the world and the noose is tightening on the Putin regime.’

He also declared his intention to implement a ‘new Marshall Plan’ after the war, in reference to the post-1945 American effort to revive the economies of Western Europe and create a bulwark against Stalin’s expansionist USSR following the defeat of Hitler’s armies.

The release of the specifics of the damage done to Ukraine and its infrastructure also comes after the Ukrainian government announced that it will seek reparations from Russia in the aftermath of the war.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Yuliya Sviridenko declared on Friday that the Ukrainian government estimated £431.5billion ($564.9billion) worth of damage had been inflicted since Russian troops rolled across the border on February 24 – including indirect damage to their economy.

In a stunning Facebook post, Sviridenko, who is also Ukraine’s minister of economic development and trade, said the damage to her nation’s infrastructure alone totalled £91bn ($119bn).

She went on to declare ‘the numbers are growing every day’ and that ‘Ukraine will seek reparations from the aggressor despite all the obstacles’.

Her promise to collect reparations comes after President Volodymyr Zelensky and the governor of Ukraine’s national bank said their country ‘should be rebuilt with Russian money’ earlier this month.

‘$564.9 billion. This is the sum of the losses that Ukraine has suffered since the Russian invasion,’ Sviridenko announced today via her official Facebook page.

‘There are at least two methods for calculating the losses. The first is from direct destruction; the second is the calculation of losses from the overall impact of hostilities, including the deteriorating economic situation in our country, rising unemployment, blocking trade, declining consumer demand and more.

The finance minister went on to reel off a list of eye-watering sums she said were the estimated financial losses inflicted on Ukraine by Russia’s invasion, before adding: ‘It is worth noting that every day the numbers change and, unfortunately, they are growing.

‘That is why Ukraine, despite all obstacles, will seek compensation from the aggressor. Both by court decisions and by transferring to our state frozen assets of Russia.

‘Evil will inevitably be punished and Russia will feel the full weight of its own criminal actions on the territory of Ukraine,’ Sviridenko promised.

Many Ukrainian cities have suffered indiscriminate Russian bombing campaigns, but the southern port city of Mariupol has been utterly devastated by constant Russian missile attacks and airstrikes for almost a month.

On March 3, President Zelensky vowed that Ukraine will be rebuilt with Russian money, but the scale of the damage dealt to Mariupol and other cities since then is difficult to comprehend.

Mariupol’s mayor Vadym Boichenko said this morning that the situation is so dire that the port city must be completely evacuated.

Boichenko said 160,000 civilians trapped in the city are encircled by Russian forces, with ever-dwindling supplies of food, water and medicine, while hundreds of citizens have already perished.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs meanwhile said Russian troops are ‘turning the city into dust’, describing the situation in Mariupol as ‘catastrophic’ with people fighting to survive.

The governor of Ukraine’s national bank, Kyrylo Shevchenko, also shares Zelensky and Sviridenko’s sentiment that Russia should be made to pay reparations to Ukraine in the aftermath of the conflict.

In an interview earlier this month with the BBC, Shevchenko said some of the money for rebuilding could be supplied through multinational grants and foreign investment, but insisted that Russia should be forced to pay for the bulk of it.

Russia is thought to have hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of funds stashed overseas which have been subject to US and EU economic sanctions as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine.

Schevchenko suggested these frozen funds could be funnelled towards the effort to rebuild Ukraine after the war.

‘The need for money will be huge,’ he told the BBC. ‘It could be fulfilled through loans and grants from multinational organisations and direct help from other countries.

‘However a large share of financing is needed to be obtained as a reparation from the aggressor, including funds that are currently frozen in our allied countries.’