The United Nations appealed for US$4.2 billion in humanitarian aid to help people in Ukraine and refugees outside the war-ravaged country this year.
Three-quarters of the amount sought, or US$3.1 billion, will help 8.5 million people inside Ukraine, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announced on Monday. The other US$1.1 billion is intended to help refugees and their host communities outside Ukraine.
"In the small towns and villages on the front lines, people have exhausted their own meager resources and rely on aid coming in through the convoys of our partners to survive," OCHA's chief Martin Griffiths told reporters.
A new wave of attacks almost two years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in Feb. 2022, he said, has added to the "devastating civilian cost" of a war that has displaced 4 million people, including nearly 1 million children, across Ukraine, and forced another 6 million to live as refugees abroad.
Russian missiles and drones pounded Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and in Kharkiv, during the first week of 2024, killing several people and injuring at least 130 others, officials said, part of a recent barrage of strikes in a winter campaign.
Ukrainians 'refuse to resign'
Across Ukraine, homes, schools and hospitals are repeatedly hit with attacks.
"Basic services are not spared. Water, gas and power systems. Indeed, the very fabric of society, how we live, employment, schools, care centers, shopping, safety of access to those places daily, is under threat," Griffiths said.
"But it is worth taking a moment to remember that Ukrainians refuse to buckle under this extraordinary onslaught," he said. "And they refuse to resign."
Donors provided US$2.65 billion, or 67% of last year's U.N. appeal for US$3.9 billion to help people inside Ukraine, said Griffiths, but the "needs continue to grow because as the war goes on it continues to destroy infrastructure, and the destruction of infrastructure is what makes humanitarian aid necessary."
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to rally support and stem donor fatigue. Far-right lawmakers in the Republican-led House of the U.S. Congress also are trying to kill the White House's aid package for Ukraine by linking it to immigration reform.
"Every investment in the confidence of the defender shortens the war, Zelenskyy told leaders in Davos. "We must make it possible to answer the most important question: the war will end – with a just and stable peace."
