Recovery Starts Locally: Kyiv Dialogue hosts side-event at the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2025

On the sidelines of the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2025, Kyiv Dialogue/European Exchange and the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation of the German Marshall Fund co-hosted a roundtable on the “Successful and Inclusive Recovery of Ukrainian Communities” on 10 July 2025 in Rome.

The event took place against the backdrop of the most brutal waves of Russian attacks on civilian targets since the war began. The scale of destruction underlined a central message of the conference: Ukraine’s security must remain a top priority, but so must its long-term resilience. That resilience will depend on the strength of Ukraine’s local institutions and their role in shaping recovery efforts.

The roundtable brought together representatives from Ukraine’s local self-government associations, civil society, and Verkhovna Rada, alongside the Deputy Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, Gediminas Naviskas, and Policy Officers from the European Commission. The roundtable discussed recommendations from local stakeholders how to ensure that local voices are actively involved in the strategic planning and financial decision-making processes of the EU’s Ukraine Facility.

Participants explored how to align international assistance with local needs, how to improve access to recovery funds, and how to make public investment management more transparent and effective. The conversation also addressed the importance of the decentralization reform, bottom-up recovery planning, and the need for strong accountability mechanisms.

The roundtable followed an online discussion on “Local Stakeholders and Ukraine’s Resilience: Community-Level Engagement and EU Financial Support“ held on 27 May 2025. The online event is part of Kyiv Dialogue's advocacy work around the Ukraine Recovery Conference and explored the current state of local communities in Ukraine and the state of the EU's Ukraine Facility. The findings from the online event helped inform and frame the roundtable discussion in Rome. The online event was co-organized by the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation and the ReThink.CEE program of the German Marshall Fund (GMF), the European Association for Local Democracy (ALDA), and the Kyiv Dialogue/European Exchange.