Ukraine War Economy Tracker

The Economy Tracker provides regular updates on the state of Ukraine’s economy during the war, bringing together key indicators and charts in one place. Sections are updated on a rolling basis to reflect the latest data.

You may also be interested in our Monthly Economic Reviews, which feature a focused topic and bring together key experts for discussions.

After a 28.8% decline in 2022, Ukraine’s economy began to recover, although growth has gradually slowed. Following 5.5% growth in 2023, real GDP grew by 2.9% in 2024 and by 1.8% in 2025. Weaker economic performance largely reflected the impact of Russian attacks on energy infrastructure and other wartime challenges.

In Q2 2026, real GDP grew by 0.4% y-o-y and by 0.3% compared with the previous quarter on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to an updated estimate by the State Statistics Service. Previously, the agency had reported 0.6% y-o-y growth in Q2. Taking into account the Q1 result, when real GDP contracted by 0.6% y-o-y, the economy shrank in the first half of 2026.

According to the NBU forecast, the economy will grow by 1.8% in 2026. Attacks on businesses and logistics infrastructure will constrain production and investment. At the same time, substantial budget spending will support the economy, including funding for the localisation of weapons production in Ukraine under the Ukraine Support Loan. A gradual recovery in harvests will provide an additional boost to growth.

Inflation slowed in August: consumer prices rose by 0.1% m-o-m, the lowest monthly increase since the beginning of the year.

Annual inflation accelerated from 7.7% to 8.1%. According to the NBU forecast, it will reach 10% by the end of 2026 and begin to decline in early 2027. For comparison, Ukraine entered the full-scale war with inflation at 10% y-o-y.

Utility services continued to become more expensive in August: water supply prices rose by 16.8% m-o-m and sewerage by 16.7%. Fuel prices also increased significantly (+8.1%), as did road passenger transport fares (+6.6%).

Food prices declined throughout the summer. In August, they fell by 1.4% m-o-m, driven primarily by lower prices for vegetables (-18.3%) and fruit (-12%). At the same time, prices rose for eggs (+4.0%), sugar (+2.2%) and fish (+1.6%).

The NBU raised the key policy rate from 15.5% to 16% at the Monetary Policy Committee meeting on September 17, 2026. The main reason was the acceleration of inflation to 8.1% y-o-y, which exceeded the NBU’s previous forecasts. The key policy was last at 16% in late 2023. Despite the increase, the NBU expects no significant negative impact on lending.

In August 2026, Ukraine’s FX reserves decreased by 5% to $48.7 bn.

During the month, $927 mn was credited to the government’s FX accounts, including $894 mn through World Bank accounts and $33 mn from other investors. In July, Ukraine received $5.1 bn from the EU under the defence tranche of the Ukraine Support Loan. Due to their earmarked purpose, these funds are not directly included in FX reserves. However, in August, the government converted $1.63 bn of these funds into hryvnia, increasing reserves by the corresponding amount and thus fully converting the respective tranche over July and August.

NBU operations in the FX market remained the main driver of FX outflows. Net FX interventions amounted to $4.85 bn. Another $722 mn was spent on servicing and repaying foreign-currency public debt, while $285 mn went to IMF payments. At the same time, the revaluation of financial instruments and other factors increased reserves by $752 mn.

As a result, NBU FX interventions and debt payments exceeded inflows, leading to a decline in reserves over the month. The current level of reserves is sufficient to cover 4 months of future imports, above the minimum recommended level of three months.

Since the second half of October 2025, the US dollar exchange rate — both the official NBU rate and the cash market rate — has been rising and has already approached UAH 45/$. This depreciation has been managed by the NBU, which continues to operate under a managed flexibility regime, intervening in the foreign exchange market to prevent excessive fluctuations. Sharp exchange rate movements remain unlikely given the adequate level of FX reserves, which enables the NBU to continue conducting such interventions.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, all domestic revenues of Ukraine’s state budget have gone to finance defence; these expenditures account for roughly half of the budget. Ukraine finances all civilian state budget expenditures with foreign financial assistance — in 2026, the need for such external financing is about $50 bn.

In 2026, Ukraine launched a new cooperation programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and has already received two loan tranches totalling $2.2 bn. Ukraine also continues to receive funding under the ERA initiative, financed by proceeds from frozen Russian assets, with more than $9.7 bn received so far in 2026.

In 2025, foreign aid covered 56% of Ukraine’s additional state budget needs, down from 73% in 2024. In 2025, the main source of external financing was the ERA programme — a mechanism for transferring proceeds from frozen Russian assets. In 2026, financing from the European Union under a large €90 bn loan is crucial for Ukraine.

Ukraine’s own state budget revenues rose by 28% y-o-y in June. The largest increases came from transfers from the NBU, which grew by 74% due to higher profits, and rent payments, which rose by 35% amid higher natural gas prices.

Ukraine’s import VAT revenues also increased by 30%, reflecting stronger imports: $49.3bn in H1 2026, compared with $38.3bn in H1 2025, an increase of 29%.

In H1 2026, Ukraine’s total state budget expenditure reached UAH 2.8tn, up 17% y-o-y. War-related spending amounted to UAH 1.8tn, or 64% of total expenditure: 51% was financed from Ukraine’s own resources and 13% through defence aid. A year earlier, the split was 45% and 16%. Ukraine’s own financing of the war is therefore rising much faster, up 33%, while defence aid declined by 6%.

Civilian expenditure still accounts for less than 40% of the budget. Social protection, the largest civilian spending category, increased by 10% y-o-y.

Ukraine’s labour market experiences all the challenges of a full-scale war. The economic shock of the beginning of the Russian invasion led to a drop in both demand and supply of labour. Businesses stopped hiring and people stopped applying for jobs. Later, demand for labour began to recover. The number of people looking for a new job soared in the summer of 2022 and exceeded the average for 2021. However, the trends diverged from there: the need for labour was recovering along with the economic recovery, while the activity of job seekers was declining, not least due to Ukrainians’ migration abroad and mobilisation into the Defence Forces.

In mid-January 2026, the number of new CVs rose quite sharply and, for the first time since 2022, exceeded pre-war levels. The number of new vacancies, meanwhile, has fluctuated within the 120–130% range. Importantly, this does not mean there are more vacancies than CVs: on average, there are 2.5 new CVs per new vacancy.

NB: We recalculated the indices, excluding data from the Jooble aggregator due to their significant difference from the data from work.ua and robota.ua.

The State Statistics Service of Ukraine stopped publishing unemployment data when the full-scale war started. The Info Sapiens research agency makes its own estimates of the unemployment rate. According to these estimates, Ukraine’s unemployment rate increased to 16.2% in August 2026. A proxy indicator for the poverty rate — the share of respondents who have to cut spending on food — increased to 17.7% in August.

Given that neither the number of unemployed people nor the size of the working-age population is known with certainty, it is appropriate to analyse this unemployment estimate over time. We see that over the past few years Ukraine has experienced a decline in the unemployment rate, while the overall level of poverty has remained high.

In 2025, 303,000 more Ukrainian citizens left Ukraine through its western and south-western borders than entered the country. This was 34% lower than in 2024, when departures exceeded returns by 459,000 Ukrainian citizens.

In August 2026, the seasonally adjusted Business Activity Expectations Index (BAEI) deteriorated to 48.4, remaining in negative territory below the neutral level. The unadjusted BAEI also worsened and returned to negative territory. Seasonally adjusted data provide a clearer picture of the underlying trend.

According to the NBU, business sentiment was primarily affected by significant losses caused by the large-scale destruction of production facilities.

Changes in business expectations are an important subjective indicator of the economic situation, signalling a gradual recovery or deterioration in business activity.

The Info Sapiens Consumer Sentiment Index stood at 81.5 points in July 2026, up from 76.9 in April. A reading below 100 means that negative consumer sentiment prevails. The index comprises the Economic Expectations Index, which stood at 93 in July, and the Current Situation Index, at 64.2. Consumer sentiment improved over the summer and exceeded the corresponding levels recorded in July 2025 and July 2024. One likely factor was the stable electricity supply situation.

Here we do not apply seasonal adjustment because, for consumer expectations, there are not enough observations, and the fluctuations are mostly unsystematic and not tied to the month of the year. This contrasts with businesses, whose expectations are shaped by more fundamental seasonal patterns in consumption, project cycles, agriculture, and so on.

Unfortunately, as of January 2026, Info Sapiens has discontinued its monthly consumer sentiment survey — updates will now be published on a quarterly basis.

For most of August, Ukraine exported more electricity than it imported. The stable situation in the power system also meant there were no nationwide power cuts. Hot days did not create major problems, as additional electricity demand was partly covered by solar generation. At the same time, Russia did not carry out large-scale attacks on energy infrastructure, instead targeting other civilian facilities in August. Imports are likely to rise and exceed exports in autumn as temperatures fall and Russian attacks intensify.

In August 2026, Ukraine ended the month as a net exporter of electricity for the second consecutive month. Exports rose by almost 50% compared with July, from 233 GWh to 333 GWh. Imports, meanwhile, remained virtually unchanged at 180 GWh in August, compared with 175 GWh in July.

Hungary (116 GWh), Moldova (92 GWh), and Romania (64 GWh) remained the main destinations for Ukrainian electricity exports in August. Another 19 GWh was exported to Slovakia and 3 GWh to Poland.

The largest suppliers of electricity imports to Ukraine were Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, at 73 GWh, 40 GWh, and 40 GWh respectively. Poland supplied 27 GWh, while Moldova accounted for just 0.4 GWh in August.

Day-ahead market (DAM) prices initially rose to UAH 7–8/kWh during August, but fell back to around UAH 3/kWh by the end of the month. At the same time, Ukrenergo’s electricity transmission tariff increased by 25% in August; this charge is added on top of the DAM price.

In H1 2026, Ukrainian seaports handled 42.4 mln t of cargo, with agrifood traditionally accounting for approximately 50% of the total volume. Furthermore, the ports managed roughly 90% of agrifood exports, 50% of steel exports, 95% of pig iron exports, and 50% of iron ore exports. Total export values for H1 2026 reached $12.5 bn for agrifood, $2.2 bn for metallurgy, and $0.9 bn for iron ore. Ports also play a significant role in imports, particularly in container shipping and coking coal deliveries.

A prolonged port blockade would result in export losses, exchange-rate fluctuations, lower domestic prices for export goods, and exhausted storage capacity. It would also lead to higher logistics costs, reduced profit margins and working capital, disruptions to upcoming sowing campaigns, loss of market share, and halted business operations.perating costs.

In July, metallurgical production dropped by 34–36% m-o-m due to a halt in sea exports, the EU’s steel export quotas, and CBAM regulations. Ferrexpo and Metinvest had to suspend operations at their ore-mining plants after sea routes were closed. Furthermore, the shelling of the largest metallurgical plants in August forced Arcelor to cut production and Zaporizhstal to halt operations entirely.

Recent shelling has severely impacted the Ukrainian industry, logistics, and transport. In July and August, 20 large businesses sustained damage. Additionally, 10 warehouses were destroyed in the Kyiv region on August 5. Ukrainian Railways reported an increase in damaged locomotives, and Naftogaz reported 13 strikes on gas production facilities over the previous week.

The vast majority of the economy remains at risk of further losses. According to our calculations, 8 western oblasts – where ballistic missile alerts are rarely declared – account for only 22% of GDP.

Household deposits continued to grow after a slight decline in March. Demand deposits in both hryvnia and foreign currency remain at elevated levels — more than 200% of their nominal 2021 value — indicating strong demand for liquidity.

Lending in Ukraine is growing rapidly and confidently. Credit growth is driven both by strong business demand and by competition among banks, which has led them to ease lending conditions. Consumer lending is also expanding quickly.

However, note that while deposits have already reached 200% of their 2021 nominal level, loans have not. A gap between deposits and lending remains. Banks still find it attractive to place funds in NBU deposit certificates.

We updated the corporate hryvnia loans index to reflect PrivatBank’s write-off of NPLs from Kolomoisky’s era.

According to preliminary NBU data, Ukraine’s balance of goods and services was negative at $6.7 bn in July 2026. Total imports amounted to $11.0 bn, including $8.8 bn in goods and $2.2 bn in services. Exports totalled $4.3 bn, including $2.9 bn in goods and $1.5 bn in services.

The comments and data in this Tracker have been adapted for an international audience with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation.

We use ChatGPT while working on this page to help edit and translate texts. The author, economist Maksym Samoiliuk, is responsible for the quality of the final product.