Four years into Russia’s full-scale war, Ukrainian entrepreneurs registered more new companies in the first quarter of 2026 than a year earlier—but only in sectors missiles cannot reach.
What needs laptops, safe cities, or wartime demand is growing; what needs territory, plants, or supply chains is stalling or shrinking.
Information technology added 902 new firms, up 89% year-on-year. Real estate registrations more than tripled to 690, a 243% jump. Private security and investigative services grew 190%. Frontline oblasts, meanwhile, recorded almost nothing new, according to the analytics platform YouControl.Market.
The pattern is clear: what needs laptops, safe cities, or wartime demand is growing; what needs territory, plants, or supply chains is stalling or shrinking. Food processing contracted 8%. Machinery grew a marginal 6%.
The capitals absorb the economy
Kyiv registered 2,600 new companies in Q1 2026, up from 2,242 a year earlier. Lviv Oblast grew from 576 to 674. Dnipropetrovsk Oblast: 539 to 647. Kyiv Oblast: 466 to 526. Odesa Oblast was the outlier, falling from 447 to 397—a coastal oblast that has absorbed repeated missile and drone waves.
Frontline and border oblasts show where business has stopped happening. Luhansk Oblast, mostly occupied, registered seven companies. Donetsk: 13. Kherson: 29. Sumy: 54. Chernihiv: 71. The five combined produced 174 new firms. Kyiv alone produced almost fifteen times that number.
IT leads a sector that works indoors
The 902 new IT firms extend a trend Euromaidan Press documented last autumn: Ukrainian tech attracting global investment despite war. Defense tech segments doubled in 2025.
IT does not need territory.
Ukrainian tech portal DOU reported Thursday that civilian IT registrations grew from 480 in Q1 2025 to 902 in Q1 2026, with most concentrated in Kyiv and Lviv. IT does not need territory.
The real estate puzzle
The 243% jump needs unpacking. “Real estate” in Ukraine’s business classifier means companies whose primary activity is real estate operations—brokerages, property managers, landlords operating as companies, and holding vehicles for specific buildings or portfolios.
Not construction firms; those are a separate category, and their new registrations grew more modestly, to 553. Agencies, managers, holders.
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Firms are positioning for when that money starts flowing.
Three things are probably happening all at once.
War has damaged or destroyed 13% of Ukraine’s housing stock, affecting more than 2.5 million households, per a joint damage assessment by the World Bank and UN. Around 3.7 million Ukrainians remain internally displaced, most renting in Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, and other central and western cities, UN migration data shows. Concentrated demand creates work for brokerages and property managers.
The same assessment pegged housing reconstruction needs at $84 billion. Firms are positioning for when that money starts flowing.
Real estate activity concentrates where the grid holds.
YouControl suggested the surge might reflect renewed investment interest or speculative market expectations. The Q1 data cannot distinguish an agency helping displaced families sign leases from a holding LLC waiting on Mariupol’s liberation.
What it shows clearly is geography: real estate activity concentrates where the grid holds, Shaheds arrive less often, and millions of displaced Ukrainians now live.
Kyiv leads closures, too
Ukraine’s capital also topped the closure list at 89 companies. Lviv Oblast followed with 65, Zaporizhzhia Oblast 53, Odesa Oblast 43, Khmelnytskyi Oblast 41. High churn in big markets fits the pattern, YouControl noted—where more businesses open, more also close.
Medical facility closures grew 48%.
The sector closure data shows where the wartime economy is straining. Construction closures grew 58% year-on-year. Transport and logistics closures jumped 147%. Medical facility closures grew 48%.
Wholesale trade closures, by contrast, fell 30%—the segment Euromaidan Press tracked as the war economy’s quiet winner appears to be steadying.
