Russian citizens top the list of foreign entrepreneurs in Ukraine

As of mid-May this year, nearly 22,000 individual entrepreneurs with foreign citizenship are registered in Ukraine. One in five of them is a Russian citizen.

These figures are cited by the Opendatabot portal, referencing the Unified State Register.

The exact number of foreign sole proprietors is 21,967. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, an average of 1,896 such business entities have been opened annually.

The highest concentration of foreign entrepreneurs is in Kyiv, where one in four is registered — that is, 5,216 people. Second is Kharkiv Oblast with 3,506 sole proprietors, and third is Odesa Oblast with 3,295. Together, these three regions account for nearly 55% of all foreign entrepreneurs in the country.

By country of origin, Russian citizens lead with 4,593 people — meaning one in five foreign sole proprietors. They are followed by citizens of Vietnam (1,994), Azerbaijan (1,635), Uzbekistan (1,469), and Moldova (1,118). In total, nearly half of all foreign entrepreneurs in Ukraine come from these five countries.

The most common field of activity among foreign sole proprietors is retail trade, which employs 6,346 people. Also popular are warehousing (2,746), wholesale trade (1,732), the HoReCa sector (1,703), and the IT sector (1,624).