McDonald’s opens new restaurants in Ukraine, creating jobs and training needs

McDonald’s latest openings in Ukraine are about far more than new dining rooms. Each restaurant launch in Kyiv or Lviv means hiring, onboarding, training and a tighter day-to-day operating plan for crews, shift leaders, maintenance teams and managers who have to open on time and keep serving through a volatile security environment.

The company paused Ukraine operations after Russia’s full-scale invasion, then announced a phased reopening on August 11, 2022 after consulting Ukrainian officials, suppliers and security specialists and after hearing employees’ requests to return to work. McDonald’s said at the time that it had continued paying more than 10,000 employees during the shutdown, a reminder that the labor side of the business did not stop even when restaurants did.

Since resuming operations, McDonald’s Ukraine has opened 38 new restaurants, an expansion of nearly 30 percent, and has steered development toward central and western Ukraine, including highways and fuel stations where car traffic has become more important during the war. A March 2026 report on a new Lviv restaurant said that site created 80 jobs, became the chain’s 124th operating restaurant in Ukraine and its 14th in Lviv, and came during a year when McDonald’s opened 12 new restaurants and renovated five existing ones.

The company’s planning now looks like a workforce issue as much as a real estate one. Vitaliy Stefurak said in late 2025 that McDonald’s planned at least 11 openings in Ukraine in 2026 and expected to accelerate to 15 new restaurants a year in 2027 and 2028. At the same time, McDonald’s Ukraine said 117 restaurants were operating in the country while another 15 remained closed for safety reasons, showing how closely expansion is tied to security conditions, staffing and the ability to keep sites running reliably.

That operating pressure is part of the story for workers. More than 95 percent of McDonald’s restaurants in Ukraine now have generators, underscoring how much resilience planning has become part of the job. The company also says more than 100,000 people have worked for McDonald’s in Ukraine since its first restaurant opened in Kyiv on May 24, 1997, which helps explain why every new opening can function as an entry point into a first job, a faster training pipeline or a longer career path. In Ukraine, growth has meant not just more restaurants, but a tougher standard for the people who staff them.