Ukraine's State Agency for Restoration and Development of Infrastructure, commonly known as the Recovery Agency, has resurfaced a stretch of the bypass road around Odesa, one of the busiest routes in the region, its press service said.
The work took place on the M-28 highway, which links Odesa to the port town of Yuzhne before joining the M-14, as part of routine operational maintenance, the agency said. Repairs were carried out overnight, when traffic on the route is at its lowest, in order to limit disruption to drivers.
The agency, which is responsible for rebuilding infrastructure damaged during the war as well as for the day-to-day upkeep of major roads, published photographs of the resurfaced bypass on its Telegram channel.
The Odesa bypass is one of the busiest transport arteries in the region, the agency said, carrying a mix of passenger cars, trucks and heavy freight vehicles travelling along state highways and logistics routes across the Odesa region. That heavy, constant use had caused the road surface to deform, creating potholes and rutting, according to the agency.
Odesa and the M-14 corridor
Odesa is Ukraine's largest Black Sea port city and a major hub for trade and logistics in the south of the country. The M-14 highway that the bypass feeds into runs along the Black Sea coast, connecting Odesa with other southern regions. Yuzhne, which the M-28 also serves, is home to one of Ukraine's largest seaports, and cargo bound for the port regularly passes over the bypass. In Ukraine's road classification, the M-28 and M-14 are both designated international highways, the country's top tier of roads.
Roads worsened after winter
The repair comes after the condition of roads across Ukraine deteriorated sharply following the winter of 2025-2026, a season in which freeze-thaw cycles typically widen existing cracks and potholes in asphalt surfaces. Serhiy Sukhomlyn, head of the State Agency for Restoration and Development of Infrastructure, has said the decline was due in part to significant underfunding.
Ukraine had planned to begin gradually restoring its Road Fund, the dedicated budget mechanism that channels revenue such as fuel duties into road construction and repair, starting in 2025, but that has not happened. Russia's full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, has strained public finances nationwide and damaged transport infrastructure well beyond the immediate front line.
Billions of hryvnias needed
In February, the Recovery Agency said Ukraine needed 18.7 billion hryvnias to repair international and national roads, 13.7 billion hryvnias for regional and territorial roads, 17.4 billion hryvnias for oblast and district roads, and 1.5 billion hryvnias for roads near the front line. Oblasts are Ukraine's main administrative regions, broadly comparable to provinces.
On 19 August, the State Recovery Agency reported that 18.3 million square meters of road surface had been restored across Ukraine since the start of the year, as work continued nationwide on projects such as the Odesa bypass.
