Eadership in Regional Public Administration: Challenges and Opportunities for Post-War Recovery

In the current conditions, leadership becomes a key factor in the effectiveness of regional public administration, especially at the level of territorial communities and regional administrations. On the one hand, it opens up new opportunities for resource consolidation, increasing transparency of management processes, and strengthening public trust. On the other hand, it requires leaders to be capable of institutional changes, strategic thinking, mobilizing teams, and adapting to wartime and post-war challenges. The authors conducted a study on the role of leadership in regional public administration, particularly in Odesa and Mykolaiv oblasts, which belong to the southern regions of Ukraine and have suffered significant destruction as a result of full-scale armed aggression. Martial law has placed local self-government and regional authorities in front of unprecedented challenges: on the one hand, there is an increased need for operational, flexible, and strategic decision-making; on the other hand, communities operate under conditions of destroyed infrastructure, resource shortages, migration processes, and constant security threats. In such a situation, leadership appears not only as an instrument of modernization of governance but also as a means of ensuring the viability and resilience of regional institutions. Leaders are capable of organizing effective coordination of actions, maintaining social cohesion, ensuring interaction with international partners, and contributing to investment attraction for recovery. This is especially relevant for Odesa and Mykolaiv regions, where the scale of destruction and challenges requires local leaders to possess a high level of leadership competencies. At the same time, the development of leadership potential at the regional level faces objective barriers such as personnel shortages, low training levels of management teams, limited financial resources, and the need to form a new governance culture.