Reconstruction architecture: why Ukraine needs not only speed, but also a system

by Olexandra Betliy, Leading Expert at the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting

7 September 2026

The RISE Ukraine Coalition has prepared the Shadow Report “Ukraine’s Reconstruction Architecture” to provide an independent civil society assessment of how the reconstruction system works in practice. We looked not only at the scale of needs, funding and individual projects, but also at the whole decision-making system: who determines priorities and how, who prepares projects, finances and implements them, what data is available, how oversight works and how communities and civil society are involved in reconstruction.

We began to talk about reconstruction from the first days of the full-scale war, so the discussion of how and what should happen has been going on ever since. In fact, since 2022, Ukraine has already taken a significant step towards creating a holistic reconstruction system, although the war continues and reconstruction cannot keep up with destruction.

Today’s system is represented by numerous institutions, digital solutions, both old and new, such as DREAM, and changes in financing and planning within the framework of public investment management reform. In other words, the starting point of the report is not that “nothing is working”. On the contrary: there are already foundations, but the existing elements do not yet work as a single coherent system.

The main challenge is fragmentation

Reconstruction is still facing unclear or overlapping management responsibilities, uneven institutional capacity, insufficient coordination between national and local levels, incomplete data and donor funding that is not always synchronised with Ukrainian planning processes and the budget cycle.

As a result, there is a risk that Ukraine will have modern rules and digital systems, but implementation on the ground will remain slow, uneven and insufficiently accountable.

Unfortunately, the government’s reorganisation has not helped the system become more integrated. It is still unclear how the division of the Ministry of Development into two ministries will affect coordination on reconstruction issues.

That is why the report pays a lot of attention to governance. The quality of reconstruction depends on the entire chain of decisions: from strategic priorities and project selection through financing, procurement, implementation, disclosure, monitoring and accountability. If at least one link is weak, the whole process suffers. And against the background of a lack of funding, it is extremely important to be able to set priorities, and the experience of recent years shows that this remains difficult.

Recovery Agency: the country’s largest customer

An important institution in the reconstruction process has been the State Agency for Infrastructure Restoration and Development of Ukraine (Recovery Agency), together with its regional services. In fact, this is the largest construction company in the country, or rather, the largest customer. The Agency rebuilds destroyed facilities, builds bridges and roads, and is also responsible for constructing physical protection at power facilities, although those who originally initiated the changes envisaged its role somewhat differently.

At the same time, the Agency has limited influence over regional services that exist as separate legal entities. Therefore, they should be merged into a single legal entity, as was once done with the State Tax Service.

Hromadas: new requirements without new resources

When assessing reconstruction, it is important to understand the situation in hromadas, since they are key participants in the process. At the same time, they sometimes receive new planning and financing requirements without having enough people, technical support, methodological guidance or timely feedback.

In particular, this also applies to public investment reform, which, for various reasons, hromadas only learned about when implementation was already in full swing.

Sometimes hromadas cannot determine either their development goals or their investment priorities. Although this is hardly surprising: these are also lacking at the central level. Just consider the approximately 20 public investment priorities defined at the national level.

Here, of course, there is an objective challenge: reconstruction requires an integrated approach and, therefore, coordination between different institutions. For people to be able to live in a community, they need housing, educational institutions for children, access to primary health care and opportunities to work.

Human capital

Another systemic challenge is people. We often talk about damaged buildings, roads, bridges, energy infrastructure or housing and the funding needed to rebuild them. But projects are planned and implemented by people: engineers, architects, procurement specialists, project managers, municipal employees, contractors, technical supervision specialists, public monitors and civil servants.

A project can be justified and even funded, but still be delayed or fail to deliver the expected result if there is no one to prepare it, implement it, oversee it and then maintain the restored infrastructure.

Transparency is not only about procurement

Transparency is extremely important for effective reconstruction. And here we are talking not only about public procurement and spending.

For effective public oversight, which is carried out by a number of members of the RISE Ukraine Coalition, information about the actual implementation of projects is required: allocated funding, certificates of completed work, physical progress, changes in costs, delays, additional agreements, completion of works and results achieved. We expect appropriate functionality to become available on the DREAM portal, because this is a matter not only of oversight, but also of trust and the effective use of funds.

Experience also shows that open data helps communities analyse the practices of more successful neighbours and adopt better solutions.

“Build back better” should become an operational framework

In the report, we emphasise that this principle must finally cease to be a mere slogan. It cannot mean simply replacing a destroyed structure with a new one.

We are talking about better long-term results: energy efficiency, accessibility, climate resilience, environmental sustainability, life-cycle costs, social inclusion and quality of services. This requires criteria, guidelines, methodological guidance, monitoring indicators and the integration of this principle into public investment management, procurement, design, technical documentation and financial solutions.

It will take time to change not only regulations, but also the mindset of those involved.

Instead of a conclusion

Ukraine’s reconstruction is not only about restoring what has been destroyed. It is about creating a system capable of delivering reconstruction in a transparent, inclusive and sustainable manner, in line with the requirements of European integration. Some of the destroyed facilities should not be rebuilt at all; instead, new ones should be built according to new principles.

The RISE Ukraine Shadow Report shows that the main task is to combine the existing elements of the reconstruction architecture into a holistic system in which decisions are based on data analysis.

This opinion piece was originally published in Ukrainian on the website of Ekonomichna Pravda.