Medical and geographical assessment of the resort and recreational potential of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast under martial law and tasks of post war recovery

Abstract

The resort network of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast has developed over more than a hundred years on the basis of a combination of maritime climate, mineral waters and therapeutic mud of coastal estuaries and lakes. The full scale Russian invasion disrupted the traditional territorial structure of recreational resource use in the region, temporary occupation of part of the coast and hostilities in the coastal belt led to loss of access to individual therapeutic resources, destruction of sanatorium infrastructure and a sharp decline in the flow of visitors. The purpose of the article is a medical and geographical assessment of the current state of the resort and recreational potential of the Black Sea region and substantiation of priority directions for its post war recovery. The study applies comparative geographical, cartographic and systemic methods of analysis, the information base included materials of state statistics, scholarly publications on medical geography and resort management, as well as open data on the state of natural therapeutic resources of the region in 2024 and 2025. It is established that the mud therapy base of the estuaries of the Black Sea coast suffered the greatest losses, while the balneological potential of the mainland part of the region remains practically unused. Four principles of medical and geographical recovery of the regional resort network are proposed, namely priority of preserving population health, diversification of the location of therapeutic functions, gradual reconstruction from periphery to centre, and integration of resort infrastructure with the needs of internally displaced persons and veterans.