Moving in business. Ukrainians are buying apartments – in the front zone
War is not an obstacle to getting rich – it is an opportunity. Although there is no sign of its end with Russia, Ukrainians are investing more and more boldly in apartments in the frontline zone.
“War is a wonderful business, that’s why it lasts so long,” wrote the German playwright Bertolt Brecht in 1939 in his play “Mother Courage and Her Children.”
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has been going on for five years now and there is no end in sight – or maybe there is already? More than half of Ukrainians are not interested in investing in real estate in the frontline areas, according to research published by the RBC-Ukraina website, but more and more Ukrainians are already considering this possibility.
Ukrainians want large apartments at a bargain price. They may be at the front
It turns out that the greatest increase in interest concerns three-room apartments – by 72%. These are premises located in districts that are directly adjacent to the front, and even those where hostilities are still ongoing. These include Sumy, Zaporiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.
According to the Ukrainian website RBC-Ukraina, by 55 percent interest in two-room apartments has increased. Among the greatest advantages of such a location, potential buyers mention the low price of the property, which is caused by the military operations taking place nearby.
These are mainly apartments from the secondary market, not from developers. Investors hope for a large and quick profit after the conflict ends.
Chernobyl for sublease. Crops from radioactive fields for sale
The situation has been similar for years in the area around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It was to be put out of use for at least several hundred years, and according to some experts’ estimates, the complete decay of the most durable radioactive elements should take up to several dozen thousand years. But why wait so long?
Only 34 years after the reactor explosion, the land around Chernobyl can already be purchased – in accordance with Ukrainian law – excluding the strict area of 30 km around the reactor (approximately 2,577 km2). The area around the power plant is entirely state property, but the local authorities illegally changed the status of the plots and leased them out.
In 2021, the mayor of one of the communes, in consultation with the land official and managers of four companies, illegally put 1,790 hectares of land in the contaminated zone into use. For five years, they cultivated there, among others: wheat and corn, and the crops were delivered to the Ukrainian market without any contamination level tests.
