The National Bank of Ukraine's wartime currency controls

When Russia's full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022, the National Bank of Ukraine immediately fixed the official hryvnia-dollar exchange rate and imposed strict foreign-exchange restrictions, judging that a freely floating rate under wartime panic risked a disorderly collapse rather than an orderly adjustment. The central bank adjusted the fixed rate only once during the acute phase, devaluing the hryvnia by roughly 25% in July 2022 to around 36.6 per dollar to narrow the gap that had opened between the official and black-market rates. The NBU has described the fixed-rate regime and accompanying capital controls as having successfully prevented panic, kept the banking system functioning under missile strikes and blackouts, and allowed inflation, which had spiked into the twenties-percent range in 2022, to decelerate through 2023. Judging that the costs of a rigid peg were starting to outweigh its benefits as reserves and remittance inflows stabilized, the NBU shifted to a regime of managed flexibility on October 3, 2023, letting the official rate follow interbank market trading instead of being administratively set, while continuing to intervene and gradually ease the remaining wartime restrictions.