Methodology of Expert and Accounting Assessment of Damage and Losses from the War in Ukraine

In Ukraine, the issue of assessing losses as a result of military aggression became relevant in 2014 after the annexation of part of the country's territory by the Russian Federation. Until 2022, Ukraine's state structures developed several regulatory documents regulating these issues. However, the problems of methodology and techniques for assessing damage and losses as a result of military actions in Ukraine have again come into the focus of academics and expert practitioners after the full-scale and extremely destructive aggression that began on February 24, 2022. It became clear that it would be impossible to assess the volume and variety of damage and losses caused to Ukraine based on previous approaches and methods. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the need and ways of developing the methodology for assessing damage and losses of enterprises as a result of the war, to determine the possibilities of mutual enrichment of the methodology of expert and accounting evaluation for their combined application when calculating losses from military actions in Ukraine. The work reveals the economic and regulatory essence of the approaches to assessing the damage and losses of enterprises from the war applied in Ukraine: the World Bank's rapid assessment methodology; methods of property-by-object assessment of the State Property Fund of Ukraine; methodology based on the accounting assessment methodology of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine. The authors critically analysed their potential and opportunities to achieve the goals set by the Ukrainian authorities for conducting a mass and operational assessment of economic losses from the war and ensuring a transparent and fair compensation policy. The main criteria for evaluating efficiency when choosing and using one or another approach for assessing enterprises' losses from the war were determined. The essence of the assessment methodology was revealed, and the methodological features of expert and accounting approaches to determining the damage and losses of enterprises from the war were defined. Reasoned possibility of mutual enrichment of the methodological bases of expert and accounting assessment through reciprocal borrowing of methods, procedures, techniques and methods. The practicality of both individual and combined application of expert and accounting approaches to assessing damage and losses to achieve the goals set by the Government of Ukraine has been proven.