Agricultural Land Market in Wartime Conditions

In the first months of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine's land market stopped entirely: no purchase-sale deals at all were registered in March–April 2022. LandData Explorer has accumulated monthly data across the market's entire history — from its opening on July 1, 2021, to today. Over that span, both the collapse and the subsequent recovery are clearly visible:

Monthly average price per hectare and number of purchase-sale deals across Ukraine, July 2021 – July 2026. Both lines break in March–April 2022 — no deals at all were registered those two months. Source: LandData Explorer.

The number of deals fell from 7,026 in February 2022 to zero in March–April, then recovered gradually: only in February 2023 — almost a year later — did the monthly figure (5,477) approach pre-war levels again. Price per hectare, by contrast, dipped briefly in spring 2022 and then climbed fairly quickly; today (UAH 60,995/ha in July 2026) it's nearly double the pre-war level (UAH 31,000–33,000/ha). But that's the nationwide curve, and it hides a very uneven picture underneath: not every region recovered the same way.

Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are four regions where a significant — though not complete — share of the territory is under temporary occupation; Donetsk and Luhansk have the largest such shares. Across the market's entire history, these four regions together have registered just 51,725 deals involving agricultural land plots — of all types, not just purchase-sale. For comparison, Vinnytsia region alone has registered 144,796 — almost three times as many. Meanwhile in Sumy and Chernihiv regions, where hostilities are just as active but there's no occupation, the market today still operates at a level comparable to the national average. The difference isn't that war is happening there — it's happening in both places. The difference is whether the territory is occupied. Occupation itself, not hostilities as such, is the decisive factor that stops the land market in a given region.

Let's look more closely at how purchase-sale market activity differs between regions with partly occupied territory and regions with hostilities but no occupation:

• Sumy34,486
• Chernihiv27,609
• Kharkiv24,019
• Zaporizhzhia3,445
• Kherson2,507
• Donetsk2,031
• Luhansk491

Number of purchase-sale deals with valid price data across the market's entire history (July 2021 – August 2026). Source: LandData Explorer.

The difference isn't gradual, it's a cliff. Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkiv sit in the 24,000–34,000 purchase-sale deal range — a level comparable to average activity nationwide. Then there's a chasm: Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk together produced just 6,474 purchase-sale deals across the market's entire history — fewer than Poltava region alone closed (39,196), the single most active region in the country by this measure. That's the core pattern: it isn't hostilities as such that stop the land market, it's occupation. Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv regions prove the market can keep working even under shelling — as long as the territory stays under Ukrainian control.

The same divide shows up in price. Let's compare the average price per hectare across the same seven regions:

Average price per hectare across the market's entire history (July 2021 – August 2026). USD converted at the NBU rate on the publication date.

Prices confirm the same split. Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy run UAH 37,000–39,000/ha — only 10–15% below the national average (UAH 43,700). The four partly occupied regions run UAH 26,000–31,000/ha — a third to half cheaper. Occupation, in other words, kills not just deal volume but price too: where it exists, land is worth noticeably less, even compared to other regions where the war is just as present.

That's only half the picture. Let's look now at the other half — what happened where the market didn't just survive, but grew. Compare 2022, when activity collapsed nationwide, with 2025 — the last full year of observations — across several central and western regions:

Average price per hectare and number of purchase-sale deals per year, 2022 and 2025. 2022 is used as the trough year; 2025 is the last full year of observations (2026 isn't complete yet). Source: LandData Explorer.

In every one of these regions, deal counts multiplied several times over — from 3.2x in Khmelnytskyi to more than 10x in Vinnytsia and Ternopil regions — while price per hectare climbed 16–82%. That's not just a recovery to pre-war levels, it's a substantial overshoot: Vinnytsia region's 2025 price (UAH 61,675/ha) is nearly double its pre-war 2021 level (UAH 33,277/ha), and its annual deal count is 7 times higher. The market in these regions didn't just survive the war — it grew, absorbing the activity and capital that used to be spread across the whole country, including the east and south.

Putting both halves of the picture together, Ukraine's agricultural land market didn't decline evenly over the years of full-scale war — it split sharply along geographic lines. The decisive factor isn't hostilities as such, it's the status of the territory: occupation effectively stops the market, while even active hostilities without occupation (Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv) let it keep operating close to the national average.

The second trend is a concentration of activity and capital in central and western regions. Instead of the more even spread that characterized the pre-war market, demand and supply have concentrated where there's no risk: deal counts in Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, Poltava, Ternopil, Volyn and Lviv regions multiplied several times over from the 2022 trough, and price per hectare rose 16–82%. The national average price also rose nearly twofold from pre-war levels, but that single number no longer describes one market — it's made up of two fundamentally different trajectories: rapid growth in safe regions and near-total stoppage in occupied ones.

For anyone analyzing or planning land transactions, the main takeaway is this: geography has become a bigger factor in price and liquidity than it ever was before the war — and what determines it today isn't soil quality or logistics, it's the security status of the territory. Based on more than four years of data, that isn't a temporary pattern, it's a structural one: an active market won't return to occupied areas as long as occupation continues, while it will likely keep growing where there's no war — simply because that's where demand keeps flowing.