Ukraine implements the principles of good democratic governance in its recovery policy.

This was stated by Oleksandra Azarkhina, Deputy Minister for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development, at the Ukraine’s Recovery and Reconstruction workshop at the European Committee of Regions.

“This primarily concerns the Roadmap 2026, which we are drafting together with the Council of Europe. However, there are also wider principles embedded in the European integration processes themselves. In fact, this is our strategic framework that has been informing our actions for several years,” said the Deputy Minister.

According to her, high-quality recovery planning is the priority.

“By quality planning, I mean three documents. Our municipalities are currently preparing “rapid response” recovery plans. This is a fairly simplified document that allows municipalities to build a short-term roadmap for themselves until we are able to adapt the State Regional Development Strategy to today’s realities. The recovery plan is a document that guarantees that we, as the government, receive from the municipalities their vision of what they would like to recover,” said Oleksandra Azarkhina.

She also talked about a more complex document — integrated development programmes, which should also be developed by municipalities. It, however, requires deeper expertise.

“The programme takes into account many indicators, including the existing situation in a certain territory, mineral extraction, environmental pollution, socio-demographic profile, available jobs, etc. That is, it involves comprehensive strategic planning. And here we asked our international partners to support the capacity of municipalities, as this process requires experts who can focus on this strategic task, while many municipalities are still forced to fight for their survival every day,” said the Deputy Minister.

According to Ms Azarkhina, the Ministry of Infrastructure initiated the development of a methodology for the prioritisation of reconstruction projects.

“We made the first attempt at developing the prioritisation formula with RISE Ukraine, the coalition of public and expert organisations, and now, together with the World Bank, we are developing a methodology that will be approved by the Government as part of the procedure for using the Fund for Elimination of the Consequences of Armed Aggression of the Russian Federation. The methodology and the developed plans and programmes should be mutually complementary to identify the most critical needs within the broader process of planning the recovery and development of each municipality.”

She emphasised that the Prioritisation Methodology was an important tool for the state, which, however, did not replace the decision-making process used by municipalities regarding their own budgets.

“The aforementioned Fund for Elimination of the Consequences of Armed Aggression of the Russian Federation is currently the only framework established by the Parliament and the Government for planning, prioritising and financing reconstruction right now (...) When our Government decided to prioritise the facilities to be restored that had been submitted by the local authorities in the only budget fund for reconstruction available in Ukraine, it was a watershed moment. This signals that our main goal is the recovery and development of municipalities. We are committed to the reform of decentralisation and development of local self-government,” said Oleksandra Azarkhina.