ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR AND THE POTENTIAL FOR RECOVERY OF THE REGIONS OF UKRAINE

Abstract

War is a challenge for any country, and therefore, studying the socio-economic consequences of war is essential from the point of view of their evaluation in terms of value. The article aims to systematize the main consequences of the war and conduct their analysis using the example of the intermediate stage of the war in Ukraine in 2022. The article systematizes scientific approaches to the study of the consequences of war. Scholars examine the effects of war at the international, national, and regional levels. Even before the war, the regions of Ukraine differed in their modernization potential and needed the implementation of a strategy of accelerated development. It is proposed to assess the consequences of the war from the standpoint of the difference between the available resources and the resources after the war, which allows for the assessment of direct losses. The second proposed approach estimates lost opportunities at the expense of unused potential. The consequences of the war are considered in terms of social, economic, ecological and political processes. The consequences of war are traditionally assessed by the GDP indicator. A rather limited number of indicators were used to assess the consequences of the war in Ukraine due to the lack of publicly available information. An analysis of the scale of loss of territory, the business activity of businesses, dynamics of human resources, financial results, and investment activity, international trade, and sustainability of local budgets was carried out. It is noted that all regions of Ukraine have experienced a significant deterioration in indicators, which means not only a change in the main functional areas but also a change in the recovery potential. The development of specific regions is influenced by migration processes and large-scale relocation of enterprises, which leads to a certain territorial redistribution of production potential and new conditions. Those regions with a high potential for development before the war suffered the most significant losses and will require a large-scale restoration of all types of infrastructure. Constant monitoring of the socio-economic consequences of the war across regions allows not only to carry out a cost assessment of such losses, but also to determine the content of further recovery strategies that will have to be developed for the regions of Ukraine.