After 10 months of Russian destruction, Ukraine\u2019s economy shrank by 30 percent. But companies have packed up and moved, switched products and found support abroad.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s economy shrank by 30.4 percent in 2022, its economy minister said Thursday, the largest decline since Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easier to say what we lost\u201d than what survives in Ukraine\u2019s economy, said Hlib Vyshlinsky, the executive director of the Centre for Economic Strategy, a think tank in Kyiv.<\/p>\n
But economic activity in Ukraine has become \u201cmuch more agile\u201d to adapt to wartime. Ukrainian farmers, for example, have continued to plant and harvest crops despite the threat from Russian rockets and land mines, and have adapted planting to cultivate more in-demand crops, like corn.<\/p>\n
The industrial sector has adapted, too. Factories producing everything from mattresses to trucks have\u00a0relocated from cratered regions of the east\u00a0<\/a>to the relative safety of Ukraine\u2019s western frontier.<\/p>\n Hundreds of plants that had been in Russian-occupied areas were packed up in the summer and moved on trains and trucks to Ukraine\u2019s west. Outside the city of Lviv, close to Poland \u2014 Ukraine\u2019s gateway to Germany and western Europe \u2014 many of the reborn businesses are forging ties with the European Union, which Ukraine hopes to join soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ukrainian tech start-ups are writing software for foreign companies and now have direct lines to major companies in Europe and the United States, where many want to help Ukraine through the war.<\/p>\n