The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved a resolution during the meeting on July 7, 2025, which allows commissions to remotely assess destroyed housing in areas of active hostilities as part of the eRecovery program.
The relevant mechanism was developed by the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development of Ukraine. It will serve as a tool that provides access to compensation for people who have lost their homes due to Russian aggression — in communities that are under fire every day.
Assessing destroyed housing in areas of active hostilities is difficult due to the security situation. Commissions that establish the facts of housing destruction often could not go out to conduct such inspections.
“In many regions, due to constant shelling, commissions simply cannot go to the site to assess the damage. We are launching a mechanism that allows for compensation for destroyed housing without risking lives,” emphasized the Deputy Prime Minister for the Recovery of Ukraine, Minister of Community and Territorial Development Oleksiy Kuleba.
Remote assessments will be conducted by commissions created by local self-government bodies or regional military administrations. They will be able to use all available remote monitoring tools, including:
- satellite images;
- materials obtained through drone photography;
- photos and videos taken on a mobile phone by the homeowner.
There are clear requirements for the photos taken by applicants:
- the photo must be in color, clear, and without defects;
- the file must contain the date and time of the shooting, geolocation;
- the land plot on which the destroyed dwelling is located must be recorded;
- general and at least 3 different angles of the housing that confirm the fact of destruction;
- the photos must clearly show the destroyed structures, including load-bearing walls, ceilings, and roofs;
- the images must contain identifying features of the object: address plates, house numbers, signs, and other landmarks.
If necessary, additional confirmations can be submitted – acts from the State Emergency Service, police, eyewitness testimonies. If the materials are sufficient, the commission compiles a remote assessment act and enters it into the Register of Damaged and Destroyed Property. This opens the way to obtaining a housing certificate – a document that allows for the purchase of new housing in a safer region.
The introduction of the remote assessment mechanism is part of the systematic digitalization of the process of documenting the damage caused by the war. At the first stage, it will operate in communities where hostilities are ongoing. If successfully implemented, the mechanism will be scaled to other territories, including temporarily occupied ones.
At the same time, the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development is preparing solutions aimed at internally displaced persons from temporarily occupied territories. In particular, a compensation program for purchasing housing in safe regions. The first to benefit from it will be servicemen whose families were forced to leave their homes. Within this program, it is planned to provide housing vouchers that can be used to purchase housing or cover mortgage expenses.
Based on materials from the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development of Ukraine