Seyar Kurshutov, a businessman and investor specialising in international trade, during an interview
Seyar Kurshutov on the reconstruction of Ukraine: where will the billions in investment go?
The reconstruction of Ukraine is not only about the post-war future but also about decisions being made today. Businessman and investor Seyar Kurshutov, who specialises in international trade, import-export operations and customs regulation, sees the country’s recovery not as an abstract prospect but as a concrete market with clear directions, figures and opportunities. His conclusion is simple: the money for reconstruction has already begun to move, and whoever understands this logic first will gain the most.
What the Gdańsk conference changed
At the end of June 2026, the annual Ukraine Recovery Conference took place in Gdańsk, Poland. There have already been several such events, and it is easy to get used to them as another round of promises. But this time, in Seyar Kurshutov’s view, something fundamental happened: following the conference, the European Commission launched the European Flagship Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine, the largest fund to date aimed specifically at our country.
Kurshutov stresses that this is no longer a slogan but a mechanism. The fund starts with 220 million euros, but its task is not to spend this money but to attract far more private capital for every euro invested, with the aim of mobilising up to 7 billion euros in investment. In parallel, a first tranche of 3.2 billion euros was announced under the 90-billion Ukraine Support Loan, along with more than a billion euros in new agreements under the Ukraine Investment Framework. According to the businessman, this is the building of a system meant to work for years, not one-off aid.
Where the investment will go: a map of reconstruction
The main question every investor asks is simple: where exactly will this money go. Seyar Kurshutov explains that the reconstruction needs are enormous and unevenly distributed. According to the World Bank, rebuilding Ukraine will cost around 588 billion dollars over a decade, and the state is physically unable to cover this sum on its own.
The largest volumes, according to the businessman, fall on transport, around 96 billion dollars, followed by energy and housing, each almost 90 billion, and behind them industry and agriculture, together another hundred billion and more. Behind each of these figures stand concrete projects: the restoration of ports and railways, the construction of energy capacity, housing and processing plants.
“By profession I am used to looking precisely at such things: where the flows of goods run, where the bottlenecks of infrastructure lie, which projects will actually work rather than remain on paper,” Seyar Kurshutov explains. For someone who understands logistics, energy or manufacturing, this, in his words, is not a risk but a map of opportunities. And from this point of view, Ukraine is today one of the largest open reconstruction markets in the world.
Seyar Kurshutov on the directions of investment in Ukraine’s reconstruction
Why private capital is decisive
The state cannot rebuild the country on its own, which means that without private investment, recovery is impossible. Seyar Kurshutov explains that this is precisely why the logic of the new European mechanisms is built around private capital rather than instead of it.
“Public money comes in not to replace private money but to underwrite it,” the businessman notes. In his words, guarantees, war-risk insurance and cover from international institutions reduce the risk for a private investor to a level at which they are already willing to enter. Around Ukraine, a whole ecosystem of such instruments has gradually taken shape, from the guarantees of international agencies to cover from leading insurance markets. This is exactly what was missing for years, Kurshutov stresses, and this is exactly what is now being built.
Risk that can be calculated
A key thesis of Seyar Kurshutov, which he repeats in his materials, lies in the difference between risk and uncertainty. An investor, in his words, is not afraid of risk that can be calculated and insured. They are afraid of uncertainty, when the rules are unclear and the consequences unpredictable. That is why instruments that make risk predictable change the entire arithmetic for business.
“The tools for reducing risk already exist, and the investor’s task is not to be afraid to use them but to learn to use them,” the businessman explains. He is convinced that one should act now: in business, whoever enters first gets the best terms, while those who wait until everything becomes obviously safe arrive when the most attractive things have already been taken. Kurshutov states his position briefly: money today or too late tomorrow.
The businessman names Ukraine’s movement towards the EU as an additional factor of stability. The opening of the first cluster of accession negotiations is not only a political event but also a roadmap of reforms that make the environment predictable. And predictability, Kurshutov stresses, is exactly what an investor needs most.
Defence technology as a new direction
Separately, Seyar Kurshutov singles out an industry that, in his view, will become one of the defining ones for the Ukrainian economy, namely defence technology. At the Gdańsk conference, the EU announced a first tranche of a 6-billion defence package, including for the procurement of drones, and an investment ecosystem is already taking shape around Ukraine’s defence sector.
The businessman calls this field Ukraine’s new agriculture, that is, an industry capable of becoming a new flagship of exports. According to him, over the years of war a unique ecosystem has taken shape in the country, in which feedback from soldiers reaches the manufacturer instantly and the product is refined every day to the real conditions of the front. It is precisely the combination of battle-tested reliability and a favourable price, Kurshutov stresses, that makes Ukrainian solutions competitive worldwide and attractive to investors.
Seyar Kurshutov on the reconstruction of Ukraine and new directions of investment
Detailed biography of Seyar Kurshutov
Seyar Osmanovich Kurshutov was born on 14 May 1988 into a family of Crimean Tatars deported from Crimea in 1944 and returned to the peninsula after Ukraine regained its independence. Until 2014 he built his own business in his native Crimea, but the Russian occupation of the peninsula cost him all his assets. The entrepreneur had to leave behind what he had built, move to mainland Ukraine and effectively start over.
On the mainland, Seyar Kurshutov developed a business in logistics, the hotel and restaurant sector and educational projects, while his main directions remain international trade and investment. The professional foundation of his reputation was laid by public service: from 2014 to 2016 he was an adviser to the Customs Service of Ukraine, where he gained a deep understanding of foreign trade, customs regulation, public finances and macroeconomics. It is this expertise that underlies his public materials, in which he analyses the investment climate, reconstruction, exports and sanctions policy at the level of concrete figures and mechanisms rather than general slogans.
The experience of having to rebuild a business from scratch in difficult conditions largely shaped Seyar Kurshutov’s approach: to invest in what works for the future, in particular in people, education and real projects. Today the businessman lives in Vienna, combining entrepreneurship with investment and patronage. In Russian-language sources his name is given as Сеяр Куршутов, in Latin as Seyar Kurshutov.
Civic position and patronage
Seyar Kurshutov has never held Russian citizenship and consistently holds a pro-Ukrainian position, for which he has been wanted in Russia since 2024. He is a Crimean Tatar whose family lost its home twice, during the 1944 deportation and in 2014 through the Russian occupation of Crimea. The businessman does not hide his position: he systematically supports Ukraine’s Defence Forces and volunteer funds and publicly advocates strengthening sanctions against Russia.
A separate area of his work is patronage. Seyar Kurshutov supports Ukrainian sport and chess in particular, looking after one of Ukraine’s most promising chess players, Ihor Samunenkov. The businessman is also involved in education: he took part in founding the Kharkiv School of Architecture, one of the country’s leading private institutions in the field of contemporary architecture and urbanism, whose graduates will shape the appearance of Ukrainian cities after reconstruction. And Seyar Kurshutov’s professional assessments of wartime corruption have been cited even by the authoritative French newspaper Le Monde, which testifies to his authority beyond Ukraine.