Recovery Under Fire: Security, Economic, Social and Environmental Dimensions of Ukraine's Chronic Polycrisis

Abstract

The article examines the nature and specific features of Ukraine’s chronic polycrisis, identifies the causal relationships among its security, economic, social, and environmental dimensions, and substantiates directions for transforming recovery policy based on resilience. The methodological framework combines systems analysis of secondary data, comparative analysis, and cross-verification of sources, enabling the polycrisis to be examined as a system of interconnected dimensions and facilitating the comparison of indicators derived from international databases and analytical reports. The empirical basis of the study includes data from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as well as the Global Peace Index, Fragile States Index, and WorldRiskIndex. The applied approach enabled the identification of structural interdependencies among individual dimensions of the crisis and the assessment of their impact on the formation of relevant public policies. The study finds that Ukraine’s polycrisis is shaped by security, economic, social, and environmental factors that generate cascading effects and negative feedback loops. It is demonstrated that the security dimension serves as the system-forming trigger, generating economic losses, demographic transformations, and environmental risks. The article shows that traditional recovery policy instruments insufficiently account for the interactions among crisis processes, thereby necessitating a transition toward a model of strategic resilience governance based on the integration of security, economic, social, demographic, and environmental policies. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the conceptualization of chronic polycrisis as the environment within which recovery policy is formed and in the development of an approach that views recovery not as compensation for losses but as an instrument for building long-term state resilience. Conceptual foundations for the transformation of this policy are proposed on the basis of the European approach to polycrisis governance.