For nine years, this stretch of road was a living illustration of the saying “promised for three years, waited three times as long.” Drivers who cross the northern bypass of Zhytomyr on the M-06 Kyiv–Chop highway every day have watched the same picture for years: two narrow lanes, a constant stream of trucks, and no sign that the road, left unfinished since 2020, would ever look any different.
In late May 2026, construction equipment reappeared on the bypass — for the first time in six years of real activity at the site. For the tens of thousands of drivers who cross Zhytomyr region in transit toward the Polish border every day, and for local authorities who spent years explaining to residents why the road outside their windows remained unfinished, this is news they had been waiting for since 2020.
Northern Bypass of Zhytomyr: What Is Changing on the M-06
The section between the “Zhytomyr-Skhidnyi” and “Zhytomyr-Zakhidnyi” interchanges — kilometers 129.6 to 151.73 of the M-06 — is officially considered the narrowest bottleneck on the entire Kyiv–Chop international route. The project calls for widening the carriageway from two lanes to four: two lanes of 7.5 meters in each direction, separated by a median strip. In total, about 22 kilometers of road are to be brought up to category I-B.
- The contractor is the Turkish company Onur, which won the tender in the spring of 2026.
- Work began in late May 2026.
- The contract is split into three phases: the first worth UAH 313.37 million, the second UAH 548.27 million, and the third (not yet signed) estimated at roughly UAH 1.42 billion.
- As of July 23, 2026, according to the Infrastructure Restoration and Development Service in Zhytomyr region, work is underway preparing the base for the road’s widening.
- Once reconstruction is complete, the design speed on the section will rise to 110 km/h.
Six Years on Hold: Why the Project Stalled
The history of this reconstruction is a textbook example of how a government contract can turn into a stalled construction project. The Chinese company Sinohydro began work on the highway back in November 2017 and was due to hand it over by June 2020. Ukravtodor terminated the agreement over missed deadlines and poor quality of work — but an international arbitration tribunal later ruled the termination unlawful and ordered Ukraine to return EUR 10.3 million in bank guarantees to the contractor. The project was frozen for years, and the unfinished highway remained a headache for both drivers and the regional administration.
A new tender and a new contractor are not simply a change of executor. It is a test of whether the state can carry through to completion a project that has already cost it its reputation and millions of euros in compensation.
What Drivers and the Community Will Gain
Once reconstruction is complete, transit traffic — mostly trucks heading toward the western border — will finally bypass the city entirely instead of passing through it. That means fewer traffic jams on Zhytomyr’s own streets, greater capacity on the international corridor, and, according to road engineers’ estimates, fewer accidents on a stretch that has remained one of the most problematic on the M-06 for years.
For the industry, it is also a signal: large-scale infrastructure contracts halted because of an unreliable contractor can and should be restarted rather than written off as permanently stalled. Every such road brought to completion is further proof that the country’s reconstruction is moving forward not just in the news, but in the concrete under people’s wheels.
Source: LIGA.net
