Think tanks call for Government support to keep businesses operating amid attacks

To the Prime Minister of Ukraine

To the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine

Dear Prime Minister, Dear Ministers,

We, the undersigned think tanks and expert organisations, are addressing the Government with proposals to support enterprises affected by Russian attacks.

1. Why this needs to be addressed now

Attacks on production, commercial and logistics facilities have increased sharply. According to our facility-level registry, 47 attacks on business facilities were recorded in July 2026, 92 in August, and 45 in the first 28 days of September. Before July, the number ranged from 1 to 12 cases per month. We estimate modelled direct property losses from 1 January to 28 September 2026 at UAH 127.4 billion (213 registry records). This is an estimate based on an incomplete registry of publicly reported incidents; it is not official statistics and represents a lower bound.

If the intensity of attacks remains at this level, direct property losses to businesses over the next 12 months will amount to approximately UAH 355 billion (a range of UAH 276–447 billion). Under a scenario of intensified attacks on logistics and energy infrastructure, losses could reach approximately UAH 660 billion. This forecast is based on publicly confirmed incidents recorded in the registry, so actual losses will be higher.

Existing support mechanisms are not reaching most affected businesses. According to our survey of 127 companies conducted in August 2026, only 39% of those that suffered losses applied for compensation. Of the applicants, 44% were denied support, while only 7% received a payment. Official data confirm this picture: as of 17 September, 323 applications worth UAH 6.8 billion had been approved under the programme for partial compensation of property costs, while UAH 1 billion was allocated for the programme in the 2026 state budget, and no actual payments under the property component had yet been made. Others do not apply because the procedure is lengthy, documentation requirements differ across authorities, and the current rules still do not cover inventories – the largest category of losses for trade and logistics businesses. The Government decision of 17 September, which added Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast to the areas of increased risk and included leased property, addresses a gap that accounted for around two-thirds of the losses recorded in our registry.

Time is the most critical factor. A business makes decisions about renting a new warehouse, carrying out repairs or laying off staff within the first weeks after an attack. If support arrives two months later, it no longer affects those decisions. A temporary shutdown can thus turn into a permanently closed enterprise, lost jobs and lower tax revenues.

2. The principle underpinning our proposals

The aggressor state should compensate for destroyed property. The Government’s task is to ensure that an enterprise that has lost an asset can quickly resume operations and continue paying taxes. Budget resources are limited, so they should be directed where one hryvnia of public funding can mobilise more private funding – from insurers, lenders and businesses themselves. Direct payments should be retained for micro and small businesses for which other instruments are unavailable.

3. Five solutions we ask the Government to adopt as a priority

1. A single document for recording war-related damage. At present, an enterprise must separately prove the same fact to the relevant agency, insurer, tax authorities and creditors, and none of them accepts documentation prepared for another procedure. We propose recording an incident within 72 hours through a single registry entry recognised across all procedures. The registry would also give the Ministry of Finance an accurate basis for calculating the cost of any programme. At present, such costs can only be estimated within a range.
2. A simplified regulatory regime for reconstruction. Rebuilding a facility to the same specifications is subject to the same procedures as new construction. This case requires a notification-based procedure, simplified amendment of a customs declaration if the destination warehouse has been destroyed, and a closed list of procedures subject to tacit consent. This should also include removing barriers to on-site generation. These changes would not require budget funding. A warehouse could resume operations within 30 days, whereas the process currently takes several months. Without these changes, any recovery financing will be constrained by the permitting cycle.
3. A state guarantee to replace destroyed collateral. When an asset is destroyed, the enterprise also loses its collateral, which is precisely why banks stop financing recovery. A 70% portfolio guarantee could increase lending by approximately 60%. For the budget, its cost is equal to the expected losses under the guarantee, meaning that it does not create immediate cash expenditures. If the interest rate falls below 14% (the current market rate is 17.5%), the share of small and medium-sized businesses willing to service a loan would increase from 2% to 71%.
4. Affordable war-risk insurance. A bank will not finance an asset that cannot be insured. Subsidising insurance premiums works: in the first insurance policies, it reduced the premium rate from 4.24% to 1.6%. For the programme to scale up, three things are needed: multi-year funding, competitive selection of insurers, and simpler access for foreign reinsurers. We estimate the layer of losses above the limits of Ukrainian insurers at UAH 355 billion per year, while international reinsurance capacity currently covers around one-tenth of this amount. There is demand for insurance: according to our survey of 328 enterprises conducted on 20–22 September 2026, 70% cannot find an affordable insurance product, 38.8% are willing to pay up to 1% of the value of their assets per year, and only 4.3% are willing to pay more than 2%. A mandatory 2% contribution is supported by 11.4% of respondents, a VAT increase by 15.4%, and voluntary insurance with state participation by 53.2%. These figures should be taken into account when designing the war-risk insurance programme and selecting funding sources for the war-risk insurance fund, which the Cabinet of Ministers plans to launch in January 2027.
5. Retaining employees in the first months after an attack. Once people leave, an enterprise may not be able to bring them back after operations are restored. The current partial unemployment assistance programme is well designed in principle, but the amount of support is limited and no payments are made during periods of downtime. For enterprises with confirmed damage, we propose expanding the programme: decisions within three working days and support for 3–6 months, conditional on preserving jobs.

4. Sequencing

• First 30 days: procedural measures requiring little or no budget funding. These include a single damage-recording mechanism, recognition of force majeure based on a combination of documents, reducing the application review period from 60 to 30 days, restoring lost documents, and simplifying permitting procedures.
• Days 31–90: pilots of insurance and lending instruments with firm budget ceilings, following actuarial calculations and consultations with the National Bank of Ukraine, banks and insurers.
• 3–6 months: measures that create significant state liabilities. These should be adopted only after a full fiscal analysis and an assessment of compliance with state aid rules.

5. Safeguards

We propose introducing each instrument with the following safeguards:

• each loss is compensated only once, with all payment channels recorded in a shared registry;
• an annual ceiling on state liabilities is established in the state budget law;
• a dashboard is published monthly showing the number of applications, processing times, refusals and payments;
• each instrument has an automatic sunset date and is reviewed every six months.

6. We propose the following 12-month targets:

• increase the share of affected enterprises that submit an application from 39% to 70%;
• increase the share of applicants who receive a payment from 7% to 60%;
• achieve a median period of 30 days from application to payment;
• reduce the average interest rate on recovery loans to below 14%.

We consider the number of enterprises that have resumed operations and the volume of private financing mobilised to be the key measures of success.

We are ready to provide the Government with the full policy paper, the registry of affected facilities and the calculation models, and to participate in drafting the relevant legislation and regulations. We request a working meeting with representatives of the Cabinet of Ministers, the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Finance.

Yours sincerely,

Kyiv Foresight Foundation

Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting

Economic Expert Platform

Advanter Group

Office of the Chief Economist of the Coalition of Business Communities for the Modernisation of Ukraine