KYIV (Reuters) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said on Tuesday it was lending 25 million euros ($27.24 million) to the Ukrainian city of Dnipro to help it cope with an influx of people fleeing fighting.
It said the loan would help ensure the continuous provision of vital municipal services in the southeastern city following the arrival of people forced to flee other locations because of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“Dnipro and its key municipal utilities have been seriously affected by the war and are struggling to keep day-to-day operations functioning,” the EBRD said in a statement.
Dnipro’s pre-war population of about 1 million people has been swollen by constant inflows of internally displaced people even though the city has also come under fire since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
In December, the EBRD also provided a 25-million-euro loan to Lviv, the biggest city in the western part of Ukraine.
Government officials have said there are about 4.8 million registered internally displaced people in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
