© NGO Proliska/Andrii Kidalov
Ukraine
How the Ukraine humanitarian crisis is affecting families
Meet three families living through the ongoing war – and see how your support is helping them find safety and strength.
Ukraine
Meet three families living through the ongoing war – and see how your support is helping them find safety and strength.
The Ukraine humanitarian crisis continues to put millions of families at risk.
Relentless Russian aerial attacks – some of the fiercest since the war began – are tearing through homes, hospitals and power networks. Attacks on energy infrastructure have also left communities without heating, electricity and water.
Four years after the full-scale invasion began, the impact is stark:
People must make life or death choices to keep their loved ones safe. For families already exhausted by years of violence, each blackout and air-raid alarm brings the same impossible question: stay and endure, or leave everything behind again?
With your support, UNHCR and partners are working to help people cope with these shocks – and hold on to safety and dignity. Meet three families doing their best to survive.
In June 2025, an aerial attack on Kyiv killed 30 people, injured more than 170 and caused widespread destruction to residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure. Among those caught in the blast were Valentyna, 87, and her husband, Valentin, who lived on the eighth floor of a building that was hit.
“It was around 3 am when we heard the first big explosion,” says Valentyna. “There have been a lot of attacks in our district, so we have almost gotten used to it, but this time it was different. We could hear a whistle sound, and that’s when we got up from our beds and went to the corridor behind two walls. And luckily we did, because our bedroom faces the wall that was hit.”
“The humanitarian workers came right after the attack, and their help was so important because we were in shock. We didn’t know what to do. Now, we just hope that the war will soon finish.”
With your support, UNHCR and partners responded immediately to help affected families with emergency building repairs, essentials and psychological support.
Ukraine’s cities and towns have endured wave after wave of strikes like this. As the war in Ukraine continues, families face loss, uncertainty and fear in the place they call home.
Viktoriia, 20, is from the Dnipropetrovsk region in eastern Ukraine. Her husband is in the army, defending his country, so Viktoriia cares for their two children, aged two and four, on her own. She is also heavily pregnant with their third child.
The young family evacuated from their village when aerial attacks on their home intensified.
“I remember we were getting ready to leave, and our bus was scheduled for 5 am, but we couldn’t leave the basement because of the heavy explosions,” says Viktoriia. “My son was in distress – each time he heard an explosion, he would start shaking. Eventually, things seemed to calm down a bit, but the strikes kept coming. It reached a point where he would flinch at any sudden loud noise, even if something accidentally fell on the kitchen floor.”
After fleeing with few belongings, the family was first hosted in a shelter for displaced people and received essential items. Viktoriia also connected with a UNHCR partner which provided her with maternity care and state social benefits – both made possible with donor support.
Now renting a small apartment in Dnipro, Viktoriia still faces hardship beyond the physical threat of war. She lacks basic items like a refrigerator, and with money scarce, it’s difficult to make ends meet. Yet she is determined to stay strong.
“If I was constantly grieving and crying, what would happen to my children? They feel everything. And my unborn baby, he feels my emotions too,” she says.
In southeast Ukraine, your support helps people find safety at transit centres, where people displaced and evacuated from frontline areas can receive immediate relief. UNHCR and its partners provide legal aid, psychosocial support, emergency cash assistance, and basic items such as hygiene kits, bedding and blankets.
Nina arrived at one such centre after evacuating in February with her daughter and three grandchildren – including Milana, just one year old. They came from the Zaporizhzhia region, where attacks had intensified and damaged their home.
“We didn’t want to leave for quite a long time, but the attacks increased,” Nina explains. “Almost all families with children left. So that was the time when we also called for help to evacuate. We managed to bring only small bags with all our belongings. The plan for now is to go to the western part of the country where it’s safer.”
When families arrive at transit centres with only what they can carry, the first days are about basics: somewhere to sleep, warm clothes, medicines, a way to contact relatives – and the reassurance that they are not alone. This is how your generous support helps families like Nina’s in their most desperate hours.
When bombs fall and families flee, you help UNHCR and partners deliver practical assistance to people uprooted by war.
With your help, families can access:
This is life-saving humanitarian assistance – and it reaches people at the moment they need it most.
For Ukrainian families, war is everyday life. It is sirens at night, sudden evacuations and the fear of what comes next.
The Ukraine humanitarian crisis is far from over, and your support is still urgently needed. With no clear end in sight to the conflict, your generosity is crucial to reach people under fire in frontline regions, older people without basic services, and displaced families struggling to find safe housing.
Please make a gift today so UNHCR and partners can deliver emergency shelter, cash assistance and psychological support.
We all hope the weapons of war will fall silent soon. Until they do, families in Ukraine are counting on you not to look away.
Meet three families living through the ongoing war – and see how your support is helping them find safety and strength.
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