"Not a beggar": what could Ukrainian cities offer their partners?

russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine resulted with an unexpected side effect, namely the sharp revival of intermunicipal partnerships. Formal partnership agreements and scheduled visits turned into real cooperation. In four years, Ukrainian cities have become not only the aid recipients, but also partners, able to export solutions, models, innovation and expertise. In the first days after February 24, 2022 dozens of cities throughout the world showed their solidarity with Ukraine through real steps: humanitarian trucks, machinery supply, medical equipment, generators, special vehicles. This support has become more organized and system-based with time, as common projects, expertise sharing, strategic recovery plans and fundraising efforts would appear. The number of intermunicipal partnerships has doubled at the least, although a active interaction often takes place without any formal agreements.

The mayors' role also possesses considerable political weight. The Visegrad Group mayors have signed the Pact of Free Cities, ensuring regular coordination of support and advocation of Ukraine at national and global scene.

Pro-Ukrainian stance of Budapest mayor, Gergely Karácsony, runs counter to Viktor Orban's. Some mayors, who had not visited Ukraine before 2022, made a series of visits during the full-scale war. Namely, the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo has recently visited Kyiv for the sixth time.

Ukrainian cities may seem as "beggars" in these partnerships, but while shooting "CityDNA. Partnership" – a story of seven partnerships revealing various formats of cooperation with partners from Germany, France, Poland, Slovenia, Denmark and Lithuania we've been asking our foreign interlocutors one specific question: What can Ukraine give to this world? And they unanimously stated that Ukraine is an equal partner, which has plenty to share.

Ukraine as a driver of digital solutions

Since 2022, the community of Martin Assmuth, the mayor of a little upland town in Germany with approximately 2000 citizens, have raised 1,6 million euros to support Ukrainians. While visiting Trostianets community, Martin was surprised with the speed of local internet connection. In his native Hofstetten that seemed impossible.

Ukrainian colleagues told him everything about cell base towers and glass optic fiber, so after his return Martin submitted the community application to regional and national programs, resulting with 7 million euros attracted for broadband mobile internet deployment.

Not once have the delegations from Germany, Poland, Sweden and Baltic countries visited the "Transparent office" in Vinnytsia – an example of the first Ukrainian integrated model of providing administrative and social services within one single space. Foreign partners are eager to learn the experience of front-office management and digital solutions, personnel management approaches and optimization of public service processes. This experience is of key importance for municipalities reforming their own public service systems, which were introduced long ago and therefore require modernization.

We've noticed the Air Alert app installed on the phones of the French volunteers from Nancy, who have already transported hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid to Lviv and Vinnytsia! They proudly stated that they are not afraid to visit Ukraine, because it's a land of the brave. Russia needn't invade European countries in the same way as they do to Ukraine, as disrupted critical infrastructure and water supply seem to be enough to achieve that. In April 2025 massive blackouts in Spain and Portugal sparked panic and affected the railways, traffic lights and payment systems. In these terms Ukrainian expertise is truly priceless.

Ukraine as the European resilience lab

Denmark's support of Mykolaiv region and the city itself is a unique example of the country's patronage over the city recovery. When the city water supply system got damaged and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to spend months without fresh water, Denmark brought the equipment and technologies that helped them survive. The Ukrainian partner in its turn has built a remarkable 4-year expertise of running a city without basic infrastructure, deploying alternative water supply systems, making decisions under the constant threat of attacks, and synchronizing military and civil logistics. The foreigners are excited not only with rapid deployment of alternative water supply with 250 dispense points and 131 water boreholes, but also with the way people were informed on their locations. The city launched an interactive map #HodyDoVody (TrotterToWater), to organize citizens and avoid queues and panic.

Lviv has already welcomed numerous delegations in a newly established Resilience Hub, created as part of the UNBROKEN ecosystem. Representatives from Boston, Mechelen, Frankfurt am Main, Tartu, Tallinn, Timișoara, Vilnius, and Breda – deputy mayors, heads of healthcare, fire services, civil protection, police, and crisis planning departments – have been studying how to decentralize critical infrastructure, host hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, maintain a city's functionality without a stable power supply, and coordinate volunteers, medical personnel, and emergency responders under conditions of constant uncertainty.

"Our partners come here to see firsthand how a major city can uninterruptedly operate during wartime, how critical infrastructure functions, how camps for hundreds of thousands of IDPs can be set up within a matter of weeks, and how a municipal system withstands enormous strain. This experience of rapid decision-making and crisis management is invaluable today for Western democracies accustomed to lengthy bureaucratic procedures – they are now learning flexibility and speed from Lviv," said Andriy Moskalenko, First Deputy Mayor of Lviv.

On top of that, representatives of the Aarhus water utility have joined the Supervisory Board of Lvivvodokanal. In this way, Lviv gains direct access to advanced Danish water management technologies, while Danish colleagues learn from Lviv's adaptability and management of critical infrastructure under emergency conditions, gaining experience in crisis management and sustaining a major city's vital functions during wartime.

Denmark has opened its representative office in Mykolaiv – just across from City Hall – not just to provide assistance, but to be embedded in the process, to understand how a city functions during war, and to learn together. In February 2026, a delegation led by the Minister for Societal Security and Preparedness Torsten Schack Pedersen visited Mykolaiv and Kyiv.

During an interview in Copenhagen, Speaker of the Danish Parliament Søren Gade effectively confirmed that small nations understand their own vulnerability before larger ones all too well. "Your struggle for freedom is our struggle too." That said, Ukraine's experience of deterrence, mobilization, and technological adaptation speaks directly to the future security of Europe.

Defense tech for the whole world

In the era of global threats defense tech is one of the crucial spheres for partners. Ukrainian technologies, as Head of Danish Embassy Office in Mykolaiv Jakob Hansen said, have already surpassed European ones.

Exchanges between delegations of the Army and Naval Forces has now become common for Denmark and Ukraine, specifically for sharing experience in situational awareness system deployment and action coordination, as well as antimine defense capacity enhancement. This will ensure safe maritime traffic, stabilize seaways and enable "the grain corridor".

Moreover, The Danish Minister of Defense mentioned a good chance for Ukrainian Skyfall drone production in Denmark, which would help significantly increase the high-tech production volumes of this Ukrainian company. Denmark is also considering cooperation with Mykolaiv by way of long-term economic relations focused on heavy industry and port. Hence, the "city-country" partnership sparked the close ties of Mykolaiv and Aalborg, which now spreads to university level, namely in ship-building.

Representatives from Linköping, Sweden, while organizing a defense enhancement conference – whose participants include specialists from such renowned companies as Scania, Siemens, Toyota, Saab, and others, invited experts from the Mykolaiv thermal power plant. They are interested to learn how Ukrainian engineers managed to restore the destroyed main control panel (a three-storey building) within 19 hours, and how the installation of locally made "life capsules" saved the lives of operational personnel who can't leave their work area.

"When we jointly prepare an application for a European program, it is not a one-way act of support. We both benefit and learn from each other, - says Bart Somers, mayor of Mechelen. Over the years, we have built an intensive bond, with several exchanges each year at the level of administration and policy. What started as a political sister-city link has evolved into a broad and growing network. Our police and fire brigades cooperate closely. Our public library is in contact with colleagues in Lviv. Our museum, Hof van Busleyden, is involved in cultural dialogue".

Ukraine as a testing ground for medical innovation

Relatively new is the trilateral partnership between Vinnytsia, Nancy, and Karlsruhe. Although the areas of cooperation outlined in the memorandum are quite diverse, a considerable focus is placed on medicine.

The Jean Lamour Institute in Nancy possesses technologies that make it possible to produce prosthetics within 72 hours from measurements to fitting. Yet any advanced technology requires an environment to scale up.

Tragically, Ukraine has become a country where the number of both military personnel and civilians requiring prosthetics is ranging from 20,000 to 50,000. In this partnership, Ukraine offers the world an opportunity to scale medical technologies under real conditions, as well as the experience in comprehensive post-amputation support, and a new ethic of swiftly restoring human dignity through technology. The exchange of physicians and practitioners also benefits both sides.

The demand for a medical dimension to this "export of knowledge" is also noted in Lviv. Today local physicians are treating injuries of a complexity that Europe has not seen in decades. Leading surgeons and prosthetists travel to Lviv not only to help, but to study the latest protocols in military medicine and comprehensive rehabilitation. They share unique cases in reconstructive surgery, prosthetics, and a model of social integration for the injured, which combines medicine, sport, and the arts into a single space of healing.

It is a complex role. But it is exactly the one that enables European partners to develop solutions that may tomorrow be applied anywhere in the world.

Ukrainian cities as professional operators of European programs

Participation in EU cross-border cooperation programs is not new for Ukraine. The partnership between Lutsk and Lublin is a vivid example of it. In a joint project aimed to restore historic towers, Lutsk was the lead partner and secured over one million euros in European Union funding — more than two-thirds of the total joint grant.

Under the Interreg NEXT Romania–Ukraine program, Ivano-Frankivsk received over 700,000 EUR – half of the total funding – for "improving responses to weather-related emergencies in two cities of the cross-border region and enhancing capacity for managing the consequences of severe weather conditions by providing municipalities with special equipment and vehicles, studying best practices, and exchanging experience" together with its partner, the Romanian municipality of Baia Mare.

Ukrainian cities are capable of acting as applicants and coordinators of international projects, working within European financial and reporting systems, and building teams that prepare complex documentation and prove the ability to deliver results even during the active phase of the war.

Reading the news, one might come away with the wrong impression that Ukrainian cities are merely "beggars" in these partnerships, because we ride trams, provided by Zurich or Warsaw, or make use of their ambulance cars, fire engines, and municipal vehicles.

The truth is that while Ukraine is fighting a war it did not choose, it cannot finance joint activities, and partner cities will not be "paying" for reconstruction over the long term. At the same time, what we have been able to see and hear confirms that Ukraine is a fully equal partner in these relationships. City-to-city cooperation is becoming part of a new security architecture for Europe. Ukraine is integrating into it not only through political decisions, but through horizontal networks of collaboration.

Iryna Ozymok