Cabinet of Ministers unblocks eRestoration payments for residents of Odesa's monument buildings

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has adopted a resolution that allows residents of Odesa's monument buildings to fully participate in government reconstruction programs.

According to the head of the Odesa City Military Administration, Serhiy Lysak, the government has introduced a single inspection report, simplified procedures for quick repairs, and created a mechanism for obtaining housing certificates for owners of destroyed cultural heritage sites.

In fact, since the launch of the eRestoration program in 2023, Odesa residents who own housing in architectural monuments have been unable to receive compensation for damaged property due to bureaucratic obstacles.

In 2024, members of the Odesa City Council appealed to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to regulate the issue of receiving compensation for damaged property under the eRestoration program by residents of residential buildings with the status of cultural heritage monuments. As Fedir Stoyanov, then head of the Department for UNESCO and Cultural Heritage Protection, explained, this was a nationwide problem. The fact is that the resolution in force at the time, which approved the procedure for conducting certain types of work on cultural heritage sites under martial law, did not regulate the procedure for obtaining compensation, but was purely technical in nature, allowing only to simplify the procedure for obtaining permits for work on monuments during the war.

In 2024, the Executive Committee of the Odesa City Council twice appealed to the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine and the Ministry of Development, Communities, Territories and Infrastructure of Ukraine to resolve this issue by amending the aforementioned resolutions, but to no avail.

In April 2026, the Odesa City Council appealed to the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine to streamline the management of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the historic city center. It was about creating a separate body responsible for the preservation and control of the use of this territory.

Кирило Бойко