On the threshold of the Ukraine Recovery Conference, Oleksandr Kubrakov, Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine, and Denise Brown, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine, discussed the joint approach to municipality-based recovery in Ukraine.

This approach envisages the creation of a Municipal Recovery Foundation, which is a key step towards sustainable recovery and resilience of municipalities. Among its priorities are restoration of housing, critical and social infrastructure, as well as humanitarian demining and local business support.

The Foundation plans to raise $300 million over the next 5 years.

 The initial seed funding is $50 million.

"Successful recovery is impossible without continued decentralisation reform. We realise that nowadays a lot of municipalities lack the capacity to cope with the challenges on their own. Our task is to provide all the necessary institutional, financial and advisory support in order to strengthen municipalities. To this end, we already create a regional support team framework that will help municipalities cope with the challenges of recovery," said Oleksandr Kubrakov, Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine - Minister for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development of Ukraine.

According to Denise Brown, the United Nations and the Government of Ukraine already demonstrate the success of the municipality-centred approach in the recovery of Kharkiv and de-occupied Izium in Kharkiv Oblast, where central and local authorities, the UN along with the public jointly restore damaged infrastructure.

In particular, the UN assists municipalities in demining, dealing with the effects of destruction, and restoring housing, schools, and medical institutions. Moreover, the Organisation and the Government jointly work on providing basic services for those who remain in the affected municipalities.

The Ministry and the UN will also cooperate to prioritise projects initiated by municipalities and agreed in public consultations with their residents.

As a reminder, in 2024, the UN plans to provide more than $1 billion for Ukraine's recovery.