This article presents an applied-theoretical research, based on a quantitative and qualitative methodology, regarding the institutional transformations produced at the level of a representative sample of local public authorities in Romania, in the context of the armed conflict in Ukraine. Furthermore, this paper highlights the difficulties of meeting the functional requirements (human resources, logistics, etc.) for the proper provision of public services and proposes a set of recommendations for increasing the administrative capacity of local public authorities in crisis situations in order to ensure their organizational resilience and the sustainability of responses offered to the communities they represent.

The article was based on the assumption that the war in Ukraine had a significant impact on the current activities of local public institutions, local budgets, investments, public procurement procedures, and aims to identify the transformations that occurred in the past year at the level of local public institutions, as well as the nature and the size of the impact.

The limitations of the study are given by the fact that each country in the vicinity of Ukraine was affected differently by the armed conflict, allocated different resources, so the results of the study are not necessarily applicable to every state in the vicinity of the conflict. Furthermore, each state has a different administrative structure.

The study provides an image of the transformations that have taken place at the level of public administration in the past year as a result of the armed conflict in Ukraine and proposes a model of the measures to be applied by local public institutions in order to meet the new challenges and ensure the resilience and sustainability of local communities.