Ukrainians continue to flee the frontline, as war stretches into fourth year

This article is published in association with United Nations.

Communities on the frontline of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine are being killed, injured and displaced on a daily basis, as the war grinds on.

“In the last six months alone, more than 200,000 people have been evacuated from frontline areas in the east and north,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on the three-year anniversary of the war on Monday 24 February.

Mr. Grandi added that, since the start of the war, around 10.6 million people have been forced from their homes. While most fled during the early stages of the Russian invasion, he said, the displacement and suffering continues.

Drones ‘swarming over the city every day’

Many of those being displaced in the east and north of the country arrive at transit centres before being helped to find temporary shelter at repurposed public buildings known as collective sites.

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Serhii Zelenyi was recently evacuated by bus to a transit centre in the eastern city of Pavlohrad after fleeing daily bombardments of Pokrovsk, his home city, in the frontline Donetsk region, 130 kilometres from the border with Russia.

“It was very difficult in Pokrovsk. Drones were swarming over the city every day, from morning till late in the evening,” says Zelenyi. “Sometimes there was a two-hour pause, then the bombardments started again. It was impossible.”

The handyman and small-scale farmer was among the last of his neighbours to leave, finally deciding that the constant danger, lack of food, water and electricity, and the need to stay indoors almost the entire day was too much to bear.

On arrival in Pavlohrad, Mr. Zelenyi received clothes and cash assistance from the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, through its local partner organizations, and is now wondering what he will do next. “I lost everything,” he said, “I need to start again from scratch.”

A safe space to cry

Mr. Zelenyi’s story is not unusual, says Alyona Sinaeva, a psychologist with Proliska, UNHCR’s partner organization in Pavlohrad. Those arriving from frontline regions are, “in acute stress, because they come from cities where active fighting is taking place.”

The UN continues to work with local organizations to distribute food aid.

The centre provides a safe place for traumatized civilians while Proliska and other UNHCR partners provide the arriving evacuees with clothing, cash assistance to buy essentials, hygiene kits, legal aid and psychosocial support. 

“In this space they can relax and cry. These are the emotions that they have not been able to show up until now,” said Sinaeva. “People are tired. Tired of war. Everyone is tired.”

Three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and 11 years since the start of the war in the east and the occupation of Crimea, destruction and displacement continue to be a daily reality and an estimated 12.7 million people – around a third of the population still living in Ukraine – need humanitarian assistance.