The human, infrastructure and economic costs of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine continue to mount with around a third of the population internally or externally displaced, more than 10,000 civilian deaths, a further 19-20,000 injured and an estimated USD 155 billion in physical war damages to buildings and infrastructure. Production capacity has been damaged further by supply chain disruptions and power shortages. Ukraine’s economy shrank by more than 29% in 2022, although the economy had largely stabilised by the autumn of that year. In 2023, real GDP growth reached almost 5% despite the ongoing war, as firms and households learned to adapt to wartime conditions, for example by leaning on closer trade ties with the European Union as agricultural exports are held up by blocked ports.
Russia’s full-scale invasion has also caused the forced displacement of millions of Ukrainians across the world. As of June 2023, the number of Ukrainian refugees in OECD countries stood at approximately 4.7 million, with around 3.7 million registered in EU OECD countries. In virtually all host countries, at least 70% of the adults are women and over a third of all refugees are children, whose futures and education have been severely disrupted.
