Ukraine’s GDP crashed by 29.1 percent in year of Russian invasion

Ukraine’s economy plummeted in the year that Russia started its war in Ukraine, with the gross domestic product (GDP) falling by 29.1 percent in 2022, data from the state statistics service published late on Wednesday shows.

Ukraine’s export-led economy has been battered by the consequences of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, with the highly restricted access to Black Sea ports hindering crucial metal and grain shipments and the infrastructure industry dramatically weakened.

In peacetime, Ukraine’s farmers supplied a tenth of the wheat and half the sunflower oil sold on world markets. Its shipments of grains and oilseeds through the Black Sea fell to zero last March, from 5.7 million metric tons in the previous month.

The Ukrainian government has predicted a slightly harder drop of 30 percent drop in earlier forecasts, with risks and uncertainties remaining high. It expects the economy to grow by 1 percent this year, expecting the situation in the transport, retail and construction sectors to improve.

The sharpest drop in Ukrainian GDP in the decade before 2022’s plunge was recorded in 2014, the year of the Russian invasion of Crimea, when GDP dropped by 9.8 percent.