The Accounting Chamber of Ukraine found systemic violations during the provision of compensation for housing damaged and destroyed as a result of the war. Some citizens were refused payments without proper justification, others waited months for their applications to be reviewed, and the allocated funding was insufficient to cover all needs.

This is stated in the report of the Accounting Chamber, the results of which were presented on November 10. The audit covered 2024-2025 and the entire compensation process - from filing an application to actual payment.

One of the most serious problems was unjustified refusals. Auditors sample-checked 240 decisions to refuse compensation and found that only 65% of them contained proper justification. Moreover, 22.5% of the checked decisions did not comply with legal requirements.

In some cases, commissions used different grounds for refusal under identical circumstances. Some decisions did not contain necessary information about the applicant, the property, or the reasons for refusal, which made them difficult to appeal.

In total, during 2024-2025, citizens submitted about 139.7 thousand applications for compensation for damaged housing and 98.2 thousand for destroyed housing. For damaged property, almost 29 thousand applications were refused, and the review of over 2.8 thousand was suspended. For destroyed housing, the number of suspended applications exceeded 31 thousand.

The audit also found cases where people waited over a year for the review of their applications to begin. As of January 1, 2026, in communities where commissions were working and the security situation allowed inspections, 245 applications remained unreviewed for more than 30 days, of which 79 for more than a year.

Another problem was the lack of proper data exchange between state registers. Because of this, citizens were sometimes forced to independently obtain documents that state bodies should have checked without their participation. In particular, failure to provide certificates of no criminal record became the reason for three refusals of compensation and suspension of eight more applications.

Violations were also found in the mechanism for determining payment priority. If a person obtained the right to priority compensation after their application was approved, the system did not allow updating their status. As a result, this right was not taken into account in the distribution of funding.

An additional limitation remained a lack of budget funds. In 2024-2025, 37.7 billion UAH were allocated for compensation, and actual expenditures amounted to 36.2 billion UAH. Meanwhile, funding covered only 55-57% of the assessed need for compensation for destroyed housing and 57-66% for damaged housing.

According to the audit, over two years citizens were paid almost 12.4 billion UAH in compensation for damaged housing and 1.5 billion UAH for destroyed housing. In addition, over 34.6 thousand housing certificates were issued with a total value of 48.5 billion UAH, of which about 22 thousand were redeemed.

Based on the results of the check, the Accounting Chamber recommended that the government establish clearer rules for reviewing applications, refusals, and payment priority. The responsible ministries were proposed to improve data exchange between registers, ensure consideration of the preferential status of applicants, and strengthen control over commission decisions.

Currently, these are audit recommendations, not already adopted changes to the compensation procedure.

Sources: Accounting Chamber of Ukraine