Over 120,000 Ukrainian entrepreneurs report closure in 2024 – Opendatabot
Source: Opendatabot
In the first eight months of 2024, over 194,000 new sole proprietorships, known as FOPs, were registered, while just over 120,000 decided to call it quits meaning that 1 in 3 new businesses shuts down within their first year of operation.
This year’s startup enthusiasm, though, has outpaced pre-war levels when 186,144 new FOPs were launched. In 2024, the number of new businesses was 1.6 times greater than those that closed.
It is worth noting that Ukrainian women are leading the charge. This year, a record-breaking 60% of new entrepreneurs are women, compared to 55.6% in 2023 and just 47% in the first year of the full-scale war.
On average, closure comes after 29 months of operations. Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, remains the hotspot for new ventures, with 26,303 FOPs registered—13.6% of the total. Other active regions include Dnipropetrovsk (18,025), Lviv (14,459), Kyiv Oblast (14,428), and Kharkiv (12,954).
Trade remains the go-to sector for new entrepreneurs, with a third of them working in this sector. The IT sector continues to attract attention, drawing in 7.6% of new businesses, while personal services account for 7%. Interestingly, while cafes and restaurants were among the top choices last year, this year, they’ve been overtaken by information services.
In 2025, the deadliest year yet for civilians, Ukraine’s three largest charitable foundations raised a record 105.9 billion hryvnias. It is more than the years 2022–2024 combined. According to the UN, humanitarian aid in Ukraine was delivered by more than 450 organisations, reaching five million people over the course of the year. Civic foundations hold licences to purchase lethal weapons, which is a function states have monopolised for centuries. These record sums were underwritten by international government grants, which means foreign states now channel billions directly through Ukrainian civic funds, bypassing inter-state channels. It is hard to imagine a stronger institutional trust in civil society.
During the GLOBSEC Defence Forum 2026 in Prague, representatives of “Steel Front”, an initiative by Rinat Akhmetov, discussed with NATO delegations, military officials, and representatives of the European defense industry the lessons learned from Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
After the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine witnessed an unprecedented wave of private support for the army. Citizens, big businesses, charitable foundations, and international philanthropists began financing the country’s defense alongside state assistance provided by international partners. Estimates of total private contributions range from tens to hundreds of billions of hryvnias. However, determining the exact amount remains difficult. In many cases, companies combine military aid, humanitarian programs, tax payments, social spending, and employee support in their reporting.
Rinat Akhmetov’s military initiative, “Steel Front”, has delivered a batch of drones worth UAH 214 million to the 1st “Azov” Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine. This shipment is part of the Metinvest Group’s ongoing support for the unit in 2025.
On October 6, the Administrative Cassation Court within the Supreme Court of Ukraine continued hearing case No. 990/80/25, in which the fifth President and leader of the party “European Solidarity”, Petro Poroshenko, seeks to have Presidential Decree No. 81/2025 from February 12, 2025 — enacting sanctions by the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) — declared illegal and annulled. The plaintiff claims the document was falsified and that the sanctions are a tool of political persecution of the opposition, contrary to international norms. Government representatives deny the allegations and insist their actions were lawful. Journalists of Bukvy were present at the hearing.