Ukraine: reconstruction in the midst of war

At a building materials factory in the small town of Fastiv, southwest of the capital kyiv, workers can return to work during the day, says Michael Kraus, manager of the company Fixit.

With the end of winter, “power supply has stabilized to such an extent that when the construction season begins, we will be able to produce in at least two shifts. We hope that we can also operate 24 hours if necessary,” the manager told DW.

German Development Minister Svenja Schulze together with Ukrainian Ambassador in Berlin Oleksii Makeiev launched the online site this week “Platform for the reconstruction of Ukraine“(www.ukraine-wiederaufbauen.de).

Organizations, companies and cities in Germany, who wish to help with the reconstruction, can connect via the website.

And it is that, despite the fact that the war continues in Ukraine, buildings are constructed and reconstructed.

“I see this as a show of flexibility of the market economy. Supermarket shelves are full,” said Reiner Perau of the German-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce. “There is so much normality within this exceptional state of war which, of course, affects life in various ways,” Perau told DW.

“But when it comes to areas little affected by the war, the effect is nil. The products arrive at the supermarkets normally. The staff are there and the companies work despite the flight of so many people,” he said. And where not There is no shooting or shelling, the Ukrainian war economy allows for a relatively orderly life and reacts flexibly to the difficult situation.

The Ukrainian economy has collapsed by more than a third in many areas, especially in agriculture, because the arable land in the south is occupied by the Russians. Instead, the IT sector was the only one that grew in the middle of the first year of war.

Kostyantyn Vasyuk, director of the Ukrainian IT Association, says that “we have the Internet, offices, safe places in Ukraine where we can work and we manufacture our products there.” As Russia dropped bombs on Ukraine in 2022, the country’s software companies exported 5.8 percent more of their services, mainly to the EU, per value of 6,700 million euros.

Economic analyst Ilja Neschodowskyj, from the ANTS think tank in Kiev, believes that “the support of the international community has played a very important role.” In addition to the International Monetary Fund, the EU Commission pledged 17 billion to Ukraine in December, which are being transferred to Kiev from the beginning of 2023. “Unprecedented help was given to Ukraine. Government services and other payments may not be interrupted. This also had a positive impact on the foreign exchange market,” he added.

There are also other factors that contributed to Ukraine’s monetary stability. The grain agreement between Russia and Ukraine was a “decisive factor in stabilizing the situation, because before the trade deficit was very large, as well as the fall in oil and gas prices.”Foreign currency arrives in the country on a large scalewhich strengthens the national currency,” he declared. The delay of payment terms to international lenders for two years was also negotiated with the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine.

From Berlin, Eastern European consultant Robert Kirchner notes that IT specialists in Ukraine are developing a new field of business because of the war: “Especially the IT sector, meaning drones, drone defense, cyber warfare, those These are areas where the Ukrainians can shine with their powerful sector.”

For the expert, it is important that the German government has now established a reconstruction platform for Ukraine: “It must not distract us from what is even more important at the moment;support Ukraine in the short term to win this war,”