Jonas Christensen, Andriy Tymoshenko & Daniel Armanios
When Russian airstrikes cut off water to 80% of Kyiv at the end of October 2022, utility workers were able to restore the flow within 24 hours. Against a steady barrage of missiles, drones, artillery, and cyberattacks, the country’s infrastructure has proven remarkably resilient. Real-time monitoring shows that the Ukrainian rail system had, as of August 2023, experienced only one complete shutdown since the start of the war, lasting just two hours. Early on, the country’s ability to rapidly adapt—for example, using commercial drones on the battlefield and modified jet skis for sea attacks—helped it handle military strikes and shifting front lines. A war that was expected to end with Ukraine’s defeat in only three days is, as of this writing, entering its twentieth month.
There is no denying the physical devastation. As of April 2023, the Kyiv School of Economics estimated $150 billion in infrastructure damage in Ukraine, with damage to or destruction of about 170,000 residential buildings (including almost 20,000 apartment buildings), plus over 1,300 schools that have also been destroyed, according to UNICEF. This makes the resilience of the nation’s services and utilities even more remarkable.
Our point here is not to minimize the pain, damage, and trauma the war has wrought. In fact, what we find remarkable is the opposite: how Ukraine prevented the toll from being far worse. Two of us (Christensen and Tymoshenko) are management and development consultants working in Ukraine who focus on reconstruction planning, energy infrastructure, and managing large portfolios of development projects. Several months ago, we got in touch with Armanios, who studies how organizational sociology applies to large-scale engineering systems. We were all looking to explore how under-recognized mechanisms of resilience might be applied to rebuilding Ukraine. Here is our synthesis of many months of discussions.
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