Russia has cost Ukraine $143.8 billion in infrastructure damage after one year of war
Destroyed building in Avdiivka (Photo:REUTERS/Alex Babenko)
Russia caused another $6 billion damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure in February 2023, bringing the total amount of damage since the full-scale invasion began to $143.8 billion, said the Kyiv School of Economics’ ‘Russia Will Pay’ annual report.
According to experts, damages to Ukraine’s infrastructure, education, energy, transport, trade, and healthcare continue to grow.
Over 150,000 residential buildings, high-rise apartments, and dormitories – worth $53.6 billion – have been damaged or destroyed, the report says.
Ukraine’s infrastructure sector has seen the second most amount of damage, estimated at $36.2 billion.
KSE noted that during this time, more than 25,000 kilometres of state and local roads, as well as 344 bridges and overpasses, were destroyed or damaged.
According to the Ministry of Communities, Territories, and Infrastructure Development, 78 bridges or overpasses on state-owned roads have been restored. Most were restored in the Kyiv (20 out of 24 objects) and Chernihiv (20 out of 27 objects) oblasts. In 2023, two bridge crossings in Mykolayiv and Kharkiv oblasts were restored.
Damage to Ukraine’s forests was included in the report for the first time. According to the report, Ukraine’s forests have suffered $4.5 billion worth of damage since Feb. 2022.
The report counts 3,170 Ukrainian educational institutions as damaged or destroyed, including 1,500 secondary schools, 909 preschools, and 528 higher education institutes. Between December 2022 and February 2023, $300 million additional damage was recorded, bringing the total to $8.9 billion.
Ukraine’s energy sector continues to suffer, amounting to $8.1 billion. The increase was caused in the nuclear energy and natural gas transportation sectors.
The damage to Ukraine’s agriculture sector increased by $2.1 billion, bringing the total cost of damages in the sector to $8.7 billion.
KSE added that direct losses in trade and healthcare have also increased. Damages to Ukraine’s trade has seen $2.6 billion in damages, while damages to Ukraine’s healthcare sector increased $100 million to an estimated $1.8 billion.
The ‘Russia Will Pay’ project reduced the estimate of damages to Ukraine’s industries and enterprises from $13 billion in December 2022 to $11.3 billion in February 2022.
The report noted it had reassessed the status of enterprises after receiving updated information about damage to assets by shelling. Individual enterprises were reclassified and will be included in later calculations of losses in other sectors of the economy, reads the report.
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