As Ukraine's reconstruction needs approach $588 billion — nearly three times the country's 2025 GDP — small towns and villages risk being left behind by the digital systems designed to channel recovery funding. Makariv, a town of roughly 10,000 people west of Kyiv that suffered heavy destruction in the early weeks of Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion, illustrates the problem: Ukraine's official reconstruction platform, known as Dream, requires local councils to submit detailed, costed project proposals, yet nearly half of Makariv's 70 registered projects list no budget figure at all, making them ineligible for funding. Analysts warn that the system, while among the most transparent of its kind, structurally favours larger municipalities with administrative capacity, leaving smaller communities — where damage records are also least complete — with little prospect of recovery even as Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities reaches its highest sustained intensity since the war began.