Entering the Ukrainian market: how to choose where to expand

Entering the Ukrainian market is moving up the agenda for internationally-minded companies — and for good reason. According to the latest World Bank assessment, rebuilding Ukraine will require close to $588 billion over the next decade. A vast market, on Europe’s doorstep, set to be rebuilt largely to EU standards. But “big” and “right” are not the same thing. This piece lays out how to choose a foreign market with a clear head — and why even the most obvious direction deserves to be tested against real logic rather than gut feel.

Why we’re writing this

the nech is an advisory firm working across the Poland-Ukraine axis and the wider EU. We help companies build strategy and choose markets when they expand. There is a lot of noise around Ukraine’s reconstruction right now — large numbers and “once-in-a-generation opportunity” headlines — and very little on how a company should actually decide: which data to look at, and where the usual traps are hidden. This article is meant to close that gap.

Why market choice is the most important expansion decision

The decision of which market to enter is made once, but you pay for it for years. And it comes first — before you build your offer, before you set up sales, before you hire your first person on the ground. If the market is chosen badly, the losses don’t arrive at once: first a year spent working out why it “isn’t working”, then another year trying to “push through”. That’s why market choice deserves a systematic approach.

The most obvious market isn’t always the right one

For most international companies, the obvious expansion targets are the large, mature Western markets — rich, stable, predictable. The problem is that they are also saturated: you arrive as one of many, often as a smaller player competing on price against established local leaders.

Ukraine looks like the opposite — riskier on the surface. But it is a market where the right company can hold a genuine advantage that few others can match. That doesn’t mean “pack up and go”. It means the direction deserves serious analysis rather than reflexive dismissal — and that analysis breaks down into a few questions.

How to choose a foreign market: what to look at

Here are four things worth analyzing before you decide to enter any foreign market.

1. The structure of the market, not its headline size

The “how much in total” figure is usually misleading. What matters is how much of the market falls into your segment. A market can be huge, but if most of it is a different segment than yours, there is little real room for you in it.

2. The phase of the market

A market should be assessed not only “today” but over time. In many industries there are leading indicators (permits, tenders, contracts) that reveal future volume of work before it arrives. Those who can read them enter on the rising wave, not after it has already broken.

3. The right to win

A market’s attractiveness is worthless without answering one question: can you actually win here? You assess a market on two axes at once — how good it is in itself, and how able your specific company is to win on it. The worst trap is a great market where you are weak.

4. The four distances

Between your home country and the target market there is always distance of four kinds — geographic, cultural, administrative and economic. It is what quietly eats your margin. For some businesses it is critical, for others secondary — and that, too, shapes the choice.

Should you enter the Ukrainian market?

The scale is real. According to the RDNA5 assessment (World Bank, European Commission, UN and the Government of Ukraine, February 2026), the total cost of Ukraine’s reconstruction and recovery is close to $588 billion — over €500 billion — over the coming decade, almost three times the country’s projected 2025 GDP. Energy is among the hardest-hit sectors, with the number of damaged or destroyed assets up roughly 21%, and rebuilding is expected to follow EU standards and a “build back better” approach.

Now the second axis — the right to win. This is where the honest answer depends on who you are. The companies with the strongest position usually have one of the following: regional proximity and ready logistics, a credible local partner, access to financing and guarantees, or a specialized capability that is scarce in the market. A distant company with none of these is not automatically disqualified — but it should either build that edge or partner with someone who already has it, rather than assume the opportunity alone is enough.

And there is the other side that no honest analysis skips — the risks you cannot ignore: security and wartime risk, payment risk and access to financing and guarantees, a reliable partner on the ground, and the regulatory environment. A right to win in Ukraine can be very real — but only once those risks are under control. Whether the conclusion fits your specific company depends on its profile, its risk appetite and its access to financing.

From analysis to decision: validating the hypothesis

Any desk analysis is only a hypothesis, not a decision. Before you put real money on a market, you have to test it on the ground: attend trade shows and reconstruction conferences, track the companies already operating in the market, and talk directly to firms that are already there. A dozen such conversations turn an abstract market into a concrete picture — where the work really is, and where the traps are buried.

All of this serves one purpose: to narrow the list and decide where to go. A separate and equally large question is how to enter the market you’ve chosen — the offer, partners, the go-to-market strategy. That’s a topic for its own discussion.

Disclaimer: this material is educational and illustrates a way of thinking about market choice, not a ready-made answer. Market data is drawn from public sources (including RDNA5) and is used for illustration only. This is not investment advice or a recommendation to enter any specific market. The situation in Ukraine is dynamic, and security, legal and financial matters require current, case-by-case verification. Every business case should be assessed on its own.