Five Rounds of Cost Estimates for Reconstruction, from $348.5 Billion to $587.7 Billion

On 23 February 2026, a report was published estimating that Ukraine will need about $587.7 billion (US dollars, throughout) over the next ten years for recovery and reconstruction. This is the “Fifth Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA5),” compiled jointly by the Government of Ukraine, the World Bank Group, the European Commission, and the United Nations. The report notes that this amount is nearly three times Ukraine’s 2025 gross domestic product (GDP).

News coverage often quotes this single figure, but the RDNA actually produces three figures of a different nature: damage, losses, and needs. Mixing the three up leads to misreading what the numbers mean.

Damage, losses, and needs are not the same thing

Translating the definitions at the start of RDNA5 gives the following:

• Damage: the direct cost of destroyed or damaged buildings, equipment, and infrastructure, estimated at replacement cost as of before February 2022
• Loss: changes in economic flows resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including disruption to services, higher operating costs, reduced government or private revenue, and debris removal
• Needs: the cost of repair, recovery, and rebuilding, including additions for “Building Back Better” to meet energy-efficiency, modernization and sustainability standards, plus price increases from general inflation and from concentrated construction demand, and higher insurance premiums, expressed in market prices as of 31 December 2025

The report explicitly states that “needs are not the sum of damage and losses.” Damage is what was destroyed, counted at pre-war prices; needs is the cost of rebuilding going forward — the point in time and the price basis differ. In the case of RDNA5, losses include 46 months of actual figures from 24 February 2022 to 31 December 2025, plus an 18-month forecast through 30 June 2027.

How the numbers have moved across five assessments

The RDNA has now been published five times. The period covered by the damage figure has lengthened with each edition, and all three figures have been updated accordingly.

Per RDNA5, compared with the first edition, damage has roughly doubled, losses have risen 165%, and needs have risen 69%. Compared with the immediately preceding fourth edition, damage rose 10.8%, losses 13.2%, and needs 12.3%.

The report itself, however, urges caution about this comparison. The increases reflect not only continuing attacks and expanding damage, but also revisions to estimation methods, improved data, price rises, and updated exchange rates. RDNA5 uses the rate as of 31 December 2025 ($1 = 42.3878 hryvnias), while the fourth edition used the rate as of 31 December 2024 ($1 = 42.039 hryvnias). Values from earlier editions are sometimes revised upward or downward in later editions, and the report’s methodology annex states that changes over time are “neither simple nor directly comparable.” The figures in the table should be read as the best estimate available at each point in time, laid side by side.

The sectors with the most damage are not the sectors with the most needs

Housing accounts for the largest share of damage, at 31.3% of the total. RDNA5 states that about 14% of the housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, affecting more than 3 million households. 85% of damaged dwellings are in apartment buildings.

Transport has the largest needs figure, at $96.3 billion. 32% of transport-sector damage is to rail facilities and rolling stock, and 90% of the transport damage newly recorded in 2025 was to rail. The report explains that about 60% of the sector’s losses come from the loss of use of Black Sea ports, with a further 27% from lost overflight revenue due to airspace closure.

Energy is a sector with a large gap between damage ($24.8 billion) and needs ($90.6 billion). Per the report, about 70% of the damage ($17.1 billion) is to electricity, of which $14.2 billion is generation equipment. Of the needs figure, $70.8 billion is for rebuilding the power system, and the report lists distributed power sources, the introduction of renewable energy, and the physical protection of critical equipment among the ways to go about it. The gap with the damage figure includes the additions for “Building Back Better” defined above, and for price increases.

Commerce and industry has damage of $19.2 billion but the largest losses of any sector, at $232.9 billion. The report states that these losses exceed Ukraine’s pre-February-2022 GDP, and explains them as the result of a prolonged fall in demand, disrupted exports, power cuts, work stoppages during air-raid alerts, and constraints on logistics.

Concentrated in the front-line oblasts and the capital region

By region, 75% of damage is concentrated in the front-line oblasts. By oblast, the shares are: Donetsk oblast 27.2%, Kharkiv oblast 16.5%, Zaporizhzhia oblast 9.9%, Luhansk oblast 7.9%, and Kherson oblast 7.2%. Donetsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia oblasts are also at the top for needs, at 19%, 13% and 11% respectively.

The capital region, meanwhile, also carries a growing weight. Damage in the city of Kyiv rose 49% from the fourth edition, and combined losses for the city of Kyiv and Kyiv oblast reach $145.0 billion, or 21.7% of the national total. The report cites both the size of the capital region’s economy and the fact that power cuts and worsening security affect the continuity of business nationwide.

How much of the need has already been met, and 2026’s priority spending

The report estimates that at least $20.3 billion of the needs figure — 3.5% of the total needs — has already been met through emergency repairs and early recovery since February 2022. A breakdown is reported for nine sectors: housing at $6.2 billion, commerce and industry at $5.5 billion, education and science at $2.4 billion, transport at $2.1 billion, and others. The report itself cautions, though, that data on the amount already met is not complete across every sector.

The Ukrainian government puts the funding need for priority recovery projects and support programs it plans to advance in 2026 at $15.25 billion. The report also states that if reforms are carried out, the private sector could potentially cover up to 40% of the needs over the next ten years. Both figures are estimates and conditional projections, not amounts that have actually been secured.

The difference between needs and the amounts actually pledged, disbursed, or completed is covered in “recovery has progressed,” announced — what has actually been finished; the edition, reference date, and estimating body to note when quoting RDNA figures are covered in reading Ukraine’s wartime economic figures.