Demining Machines, Rails, Generators: What JICA Has Sent to Ukraine

A Japanese-made demining machine at work in a farm field in Kharkiv Oblast. A photo like this appears in the newsletter the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) published in February 2026. According to the same issue, JICA has provided about 20 Japanese-made demining machines to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service (SESU), and has delivered a total of 28,000 tonnes of railway rail, equivalent to about 215 kilometers.

Japan’s support for Ukraine is often reported in the news simply as a sum of money — “¥X billion” or “$X billion.” What that money has turned into, however, is not always easy to see. This article lines up the types and amounts of projects channeled through JICA, and what has actually been delivered on the ground, using materials published by JICA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA).

Three Ways of Providing Funds: Give, Lend, Invest

JICA’s projects fall broadly into three categories based on how funds are provided: grant aid (a gift that need not be repaid), yen loans (lending, premised on repayment), and equity investment in companies or funds. In addition, there is technical cooperation through Japanese experts and training.

Grants and yen loans proceed in the following order: first the Japanese and Ukrainian governments exchange letters (announced by MOFA), and then JICA and the Ukrainian government conclude a specific contract. The amount written in the contract is a “grant amount” or “limit,” that is, a ceiling. It is not paid out in full on that day.

Grants: The Emergency Recovery Plan, Now Through Phase 5

Since the 2022 full-scale invasion, the centerpiece of JICA’s grant aid has been the “Emergency Recovery Plan,” which procures needed equipment and materials from Japan and elsewhere and delivers them to Ukraine. According to JICA’s project page and MOFA announcements, it has continued as follows.

Adding up the grant amounts for these 6 projects gives ¥110.312 billion (a total calculated for this article). Phases 1 and 2 alone, in 2023, account for more than ¥75.5 billion, over two-thirds of the total, and each subsequent grant has been smaller.

The fields covered have shifted somewhat with each phase. The first “Emergency Recovery Plan” covered nine fields: mine and unexploded-ordnance countermeasures, rubble and disaster-waste disposal, transportation, electricity and energy, water supply, sewage, health care, education, and agriculture. Phase 3 was narrowed to electricity and energy, transportation, mine and unexploded-ordnance countermeasures, and public–private partnerships, and Phase 4 also covers equipment for border management. For the February 2026 Phase 5, MOFA cites four fields: health care, agriculture, rubble removal and infrastructure recovery plus job creation, and ensuring fair and impartial reporting.

What Has Been Delivered

JICA’s February 2026 newsletter (“JICA’s Cooperation with Ukraine, Vol. 5”) lists what its projects have delivered so far, by field. All of the following is JICA’s own account.

On the railway rail, JICA explains the background as follows: in May 2022, Mariupol in the south, the country’s only rail-production site, was occupied, and since then, maintaining the rail network has had to rely on sources abroad. According to JICA’s project page, the demining machines are also linked to the technical cooperation project “Capacity Enhancement for Humanitarian Mine and Unexploded Ordnance Action,” begun in January 2023, which combines the provision of equipment with training in how to use it.

Loans: Yen Loans That Support the National Budget

Yen loans run to far larger amounts than grants. The two loans since 2022 are both aimed not at any specific construction project but at supporting the Ukrainian government’s finances.

• “Emergency Economic Recovery Development Policy Loan”: a contract with a limit of ¥13 billion on May 16, 2022, with an additional ¥65 billion on June 17, for a total of ¥78 billion. Co-financed with the World Bank. According to JICA’s announcement, the funds were intended for expenditures necessary to run the state, such as health care, education, social security, and civil servants’ salaries.
• “Special Revenue Advance for Ukraine (ERA) Loan”: intergovernmental exchange of notes on April 18, 2025, and a loan contract between JICA and Ukraine signed in Kyiv on June 5. Limit of ¥471.9 billion, interest rate TORF + 90bp, 30-year repayment period (no grace period). The funds for repayment are described as the “extraordinary revenues” generated in the EU by the continued freezing of Russian state assets.

MOFA and JICA explain that the ERA loan is carried out within the framework whose launch was agreed at the G7 Apulia Summit in June 2024. Because it is repaid neither from Japan’s finances nor from Ukraine’s, but from proceeds generated by frozen Russian assets, its character differs from previous yen loans (the interest rate and the timeline of dates are also organized in The Japan–Ukraine Timeline).

Equity Investment, and Japanese Companies’ Participation

On February 19, 2024, the day the Japan–Ukraine Conference for Promotion of Economic Recovery and Reconstruction was held in Tokyo, JICA signed a contract to invest up to $20 million in “Horizon Capital Growth Fund IV,” a fund that invests in companies in Ukraine and Moldova. The fund targets export-oriented ICT and tech companies, and according to JICA, this was its first investment in Europe since it resumed overseas investment and loans in 2012.

There are also efforts to support Japanese companies’ business activities in Ukraine. JICA launched the “Ukraine Business Support Project” in 2024, and according to its newsletter, of the 14 companies selected, 11 have moved on to pilot projects on the ground, and 2 have established local subsidiaries.

What Continued From Before the Invasion

JICA’s relationship with Ukraine did not begin in 2022. JICA’s “representative projects” list includes projects that predate the invasion.

JICA opened an office in Kyiv in November 2017. It relocated to Japan and to neighboring Moldova in January 2022 and continued operating remotely, before reopening its Kyiv office on November 1, 2023. On the human-resources side, there is also a grant-aid program, the “Human Resources Development Scholarship Plan,” which supports young Ukrainian civil servants in earning master’s degrees at Japanese graduate schools; letters with a limit of ¥81 million were exchanged on July 1, 2026.

How to Read These Amounts

Every amount in this article is a ceiling written into a contract or letters, not the amount actually disbursed. In addition, projects channeled through JICA are only part of Japan’s support for Ukraine. MOFA gives Japan’s total support as “about $20 billion pledged and implemented” (as of the end of 2025), but this combines humanitarian, fiscal, and recovery/reconstruction support and cannot be simply compared with the yen-denominated figures in this article.

How many kilometers of rail have arrived, and how many demining machines are running, convey the content of this support more concretely than a monetary figure. But these, too, are JICA’s own announcements. How to check, through other sources, how much has actually been used on the ground and what results it has led to is covered in When ‘Recovery Has Progressed’ Is Announced, What Has Actually Been Finished?