At the solemn meeting of the Presidium of NASU dedicated to the 35th anniversary of Ukraine's Independence, held on August 21, 2026, Academician-Secretary of the Department of Economics of NASU, Director of the Institute for Economics and Forecasting of NASU, Academician of NASU Valeriy Heyets presented his report on "Ukrainian Economy in the Coordinates of Global Development."

First of all, the speaker noted that the modern Ukrainian economy is developing in fundamentally new global conditions. The world economic system is increasingly facing fragmentation, increased competition between countries, changes in trade and production ties, and the search for a new balance between global processes and national economic interests. For Ukraine, these challenges are exacerbated by war, structural imbalances, and the need to simultaneously ensure economic stability and create the basis for future recovery.

The report traces how the roles of market and state changed, and so did the nature and problems of their interaction during more than two hundred years, and why the model that provided economic success in the post-war thirties of the twentieth century can no longer be reproduced mechanically today. Of particular importance is the search of a format for interaction between the state, business, and society that would allow combining economic efficiency, social sustainability, and the ability to protect national interests under global transnationalization.

The report gave special attention to Ukraine's European vector. European integration opens up significant opportunities, but at the same time raises the question of the ability of Ukraine’s economy to adapt European rules to its own institutional, social and structural peculiarities. That is why the future of Ukraine will depend not only on access to external resources and markets, but also on what domestic development model the country will be able to generate.

One of the main issues in the post-war period will be the restoration of the economy's ability to save, accumulate and productively invest. The historical experience of different countries demonstrates that the amount of foreign aid in itself does not guarantee an economic breakthrough. The decisive factors are rather the quality of national policy, the distribution of financial resources, the motivation of private capital and the ability to transform the existing production potential into a new structure of the economy.

Ukraine already has the prerequisites for several possible developmental trajectories. They are related to the use of traditional competitive advantages, as well as the formation of new high-tech sectors, the development of defense-industrial potential, inclusion in European production chains, and structural modernization. At the same time, there is a risk of an inertial scenario, in which the existing structural problems will continue to reproduce.

The issue is not so much in choosing a ready-made foreign model, but in shaping Ukraine's own model of economic recovery, capable of combining market mechanisms, an effective state, private initiative, technological development, and social self-organization.

All this emphasizes the need for comprehensive research aimed at identifying possible trajectories of Ukraine’s post-war development, assessing their economic and social consequences, and identifying the conditions under which individual scenarios can be implemented. Of particular importance is the combination of economic, social, and scientific-technological dimensions, as well as the use of modern digital tools for modeling, quantification, and adaptation of scenarios to changes in domestic and global environment.

Thus, it is not only about rebuilding what was destroyed, but about a much more challenging task, that is, determining Ukraine's place in the intensively reshaping global economic order.