KIEV, September 17. /ITAR-TASS/. The Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council puts the direct damage from a military conflict in eastern Ukraine at 30 billion hryvnias ($2.3 billion), its analytical center reported on Wednesday.

“Alone direct economic damage to the country as a result of a worsening social-political situation and an armed confrontation in the east of the country can be estimated at more than 30 billion hryvnias,” its report said.

This amount does not include the financing of restoration and repair work at the airports of Donetsk and Luhansk as well as at coal industry facilities.

According to the regional development ministry, damage to educational, healthcare, sports, administrative and industrial facilities in the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions stood at 4.788 billion hryvnias ($370 million) as of September 1.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on Wednesday, that the Finance Ministry would set up a special fund for restoration of the country’s southeast, which would be replenished through donations by Ukrainian oligarchs and international donor aid.

“We will have a relevant donor conference,” he said, adding that money from the federal budget would be allocated only if the Ukrainian government “regains full control of the territory and enterprises start operating and paying taxes”.

“We will not take money from [the cities of] Lviv, Poltava, Zhitomir, Ukraine’s retirees, medical workers, and teachers, and send them just to restore the territories which are not controlled by Ukraine,” Yatsenyuk said.

Ukraine has spent almost 63 million hryvnias (about $5 billion) on a military operation in the southeast of the country, Ukrainian president’s envoy for conflict settlement in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions told a briefing on Wednesday.

The southeastern Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk regions have been the scene of fierce clashes between local militias and troops loyal to Kiev seeking to regain control over the breakaway territories, which on May 11 proclaimed their independence at local referendums and now call themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics.

On September 5, the trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine (Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE) and representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics reached an agreement on ceasefire in Ukraine’s embattled southeast, troops’ withdrawal, exchange of prisoners and provision of humanitarian aid.