“Winter is coming,…[and] all we want to do [is] supplying insulin to hospitals, supplying blankets, supplying mattresses…it’s not complicated”, said Denise Brown, UN Resident Coordinator in Ukraine.
She is currently on a three-day mission in eastern and central Ukraine (Kryivyi Rih, Kharkiv and Dnipro) to assess first-hand the humanitarian situation.
“Constant” Negotiations
Ms Brown told reporters in Geneva that the UN was “constantly negotiating” to access, “from the top down”, the line that divides those fighting the war resulting from the Russian invasion on February 24, in the south and ballast.
Ms Brown also said she had no way of confirming what, “if any” relief items Russia had sent to areas not controlled by the government. Humanitarian organizations “simply have no reliable means of crossing the frontline”.
But she said she was “I hope that the Russian Federation will provide security guarantees that we have to go through”.
So far they have “has reached less than a million people in areas not controlled by the government” and she warned, “if farmers can’t reach their land, it’s going to have a huge impact on their economic situation.”
Dreadful winter ahead
The UN aid coordinator also warned that winter was fast approaching in Ukraine and that she did not believe vulnerable communities in the east and south had what they needed to survive.
Six months since the Russian invasion, nearly 18 million people, or about 40% of the country’s total populationneed humanitarian aid.
Many older people lived in damaged homes and lack of access to gas or electricity in large parts of the east “could be a matter of life or death” if people couldn’t heat their homes, Ms Brown said in a statement.
Regarding OCHA’s plans for the winter, Ms Brown explained: ‘we will have to work differently…we can only assume’ that people caught up in war ‘don’t have what it takes to get through”, the season, “which starts early”. and lasts a long time.
Humanitarian community delivering
On a positive note, the Humanitarian Coordinator stressed that the war has not prevented the humanitarian community from delivering: “Since the start of the war, we have reached more than 12 million people,” provide “cash transfers, health care, shelter…access to clean water, protection, rehabilitation”.
Agricultural production is also “now finally moving” due to the UN-brokered Black Sea Grains Initiative. This “will have an impact on families, farmers and their communities and on food insecurity, especially in the Horn of Africa at this time,” she added.
Having met people uprooted by war, Ms Brown said ‘the morale and the hope were still there’. While the internally displaced people told him they were grateful for the support from the UN and NGOs, they “still want to go home”.
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