Weekly Update #117
May 27, 2024

General Figures

Refugees from Ukraine recorded across Europe 

5,942,300

Last updated May 16 2024

Covers those granted refugee status, temporary asylum status, temporary protection, or statuses through similar national protection schemes, as well as those recorded in the country under other forms of stay 

Refugees from Ukraine recorded beyond Europe

541,200

Last updated March 27 2024

Covers those granted refugee status, temporary asylum status, temporary protection, or statuses through similar national protection schemes, as well as those recorded in the country under other forms of stay 

Refugees from Ukraine recorded globally

6,483,500

Last updated May 16 2024

Source: UNHCR collation of statistics made available by the authorities

Source: OCHA

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WHO Installs Modular Heating Units in Ukrainian Hospitals to Prepare for Winter

The third year of war in Ukraine has severely impacted public health. While emergency health support is crucial, it is equally important to strengthen the health system to endure ongoing adversity. Preparing for the coming winter is essential to ensure that Ukraine's health-care system remains operational amidst prolonged adversity.

Thanks to a generous donation from the Government of Germany, the WHO, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Ukraine (MoH), has started installing modular heating units in several hospitals prioritized by the MoH. The goal of this project is to enhance the resilience and efficiency of healthcare facilities by installing modern heating systems. These systems ensure uninterrupted healthcare services during winter and potential blackouts, providing a stable and safe environment for patients.

Ukraine’s Minister of Health, Dr. Victor Liashko, stated the importance of these heating systems that enable their hospitals to continue operation. Dr Emanuele Bruni, WHO Incident Manager in Ukraine added that the availability of high-quality health services and medicines offers a sense of security and normalcy.  The German Ambassador to Ukraine emphasized the commitment of Germany to strengthen the long-term resilience of Ukraine’s health system. The Government of Germany is providing a generous financial support for this project.

As part of a larger initiative to install eight units, two modular heating units have been installed this week in hospitals in the Chernihiv region. These units serve as alternative heating systems for the entire hospital and are crucial for over 54,000 people across multiple districts in the Chernihiv region.

The first installation was in the Kharkiv region, where public infrastructure is at high risk of continued attacks. Another unit is being installed in the Odessa region, and four more are in the preparation stage.

Each installation requires significant infrastructure work to connect it with the entire hospital system. Hospitals can choose between firewood heating and pellet systems, depending on their preferences and available fuel types. Firewood heating units are cheaper and simpler but require manual fuel loading and large storage space. In contrast, pellet systems are fully automated, more powerful, require less storage space, and have a longer burning period.

Source: WHO

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Response of the Health Cluster to the Kharkiv crisis

 Since 10 May, at least 1,448 of the relocated people have been accommodated in 41 collective centers in Kharkiv City and oblast, according to the CCCM Cluster assessment. Prior to partner engagement at the collective and transit sites, six partners are conducting rapid assessments in collaboration with the Health Cluster and the Department of Health.

Five Health Cluster partners, including Alliance for Public Health (APH), FHI 360, International Rescue Committee (IRC), Premiere Urgence Internationale (PUI), and Stellar Ukraine, continue to provide health services at the Kharkiv City Transit Center daily based on the site calendar established by the Health Cluster to support and complement the national health authorities’ response.

As of 22 May, health partners have provided primary health care services to 935 people and provided some 529 people, including 153 children, with MHPSS consultations, focusing on the needs of vulnerable people at the Kharkiv City Transit Center.

Four mobile teams—consisting of general practitioners, nurses, psychologists (including pediatric psychologists), and social workers—have been deployed by health partners at the Transit Center. Their services encompass emergency medical care, primary health care and MHPSS consultations, and medication distribution/refills. The fifth mobile clinic present at the transit center offers laboratory and X-ray services.

To enhance awareness of public health risks at the transit center, partners have disseminated RCCE materials from the RCCE TWG, validated by the Ministry of Health (MoH). Six informative posters on Hepatitis A and Cholera have been displayed, and 3000 leaflets on intestinal infections, botulism, and hepatitis A are being distributed by partners.

Partners Medicos del Mundo (MdM Spain), PUI, and Stellar Ukraine mobile units are delivering primary health care and MHPSS services at 10 assessed collective sites. PUI has distributed hygiene and dignity kits to four different collective centers, along with specialized supplies for people with disabilities.

The Health Cluster is collaborating with the Protection Cluster to address needs at collective centers, ensuring access to nearby health facilities and family doctors, and accessibility to facilities and information on health services for people with specific needs. Hostilities across Kharkivska Oblast continue unabated, with daily reports of civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure. Since 9 May, five attacks in Kharkiv city have claimed the lives of 18 people and injured at least 60.

The Health Cluster is in regular contact with the Departement of Health to provide the necessary support to complement the authorities' response. As of May 22, no additional needs have been communicated regarding the emergency response to missile attacks.

The repeated attacks on energy infrastructure have severely impacted the power supply in Kharkivska Oblast, prompting suppliers to announce additional outages.

Source: Health Cluster, WHO

‘Everything is burning’: Battles rage outside Kharkiv as Ukraine tries to hold back Russian advance

There are some towns that Ukraine can just never afford to lose, and Lyptsi is one of them.

But the grip the nation keeps is tenuous: The streets are aflame from an airstrike moments earlier when we race in, under the cover of darkness. Night affords them the only respite from drone assault; the hours before we arrive have seen the town hit eight times.

Yet the soldiers of the 13th Khartiia National Guard have to endure, as the stakes here are huge. Russia’s relentless onslaught has a key goal: If they take Lyptsi, then they can position artillery within range of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, 20 minutes down the road.

Down in a bunker, Oleksandr, a commander, looks at one of his many drone feeds. “You saw yourself how everything is burning. It is like that every night.”

His men were among the first to tackle Russia’s new advance into Kharkiv region nearly two weeks ago. He says they are fighting trained professional soldiers.

His stare lengthens when asked about what fortifications were in place before the surprise Russian attack. “Nothing was prepared here. Nothing. Just nothing. All the positions are being built by the hands of infantry.”

Outside, the night is shaken by more blasts. “Three weeks ago the civilians were living a peaceful life here. Rebuilding, everything was all right,” he says. “And now most of the houses are ruined.”

All around the city of Kharkiv, home to an estimated million civilians, Ukrainian forces are trying to hold back a persistent Russian assault from multiple angles. Over a week reporting in the villages around the city, CNN saw Ukrainian units holding their positions at great peril and risk, and sometimes using aged and scant artillery to fend off a much better equipped Russian force, able to thwart their most basic maneuvers with huge numbers of drones.

At one position closer to the Russian border, the 92nd Assault Brigade showed CNN a Russian artillery gun, captured in the first days of the war, from which they are now firing French mortar shells. The gun was partially hidden by a wire net, aimed at providing some protection from an attack drone. Yet above, an unidentified scout drone began to hover, forcing the unit to run into a bunker.

Another unit is forced to use a Soviet artillery gun made in the 1940s. Hidden in dense foliage, its metal is rusty in parts, limiting how often it can be fired. Artun, their commander, uses newer Polish shells, but now only fires 10 a day, when in the autumn it was 100.

Drones are “a big problem,” Artun says. “I have shrapnel in me as a keepsake,” he adds, referring to the remnants of a Russian Lancet drone still in his hand and stomach, which the surgeons could not remove. “But there are certain actions that can save you from drones.”

One of them springs into life: an alert from a $30 frequency scanner on his webbing. It has picked up the approach of another Orlan drone, sending Artun into the bunker. He looks out into the sky above, and sees it pass overhead. He commands a diverse unit, epitomizing the manpower challenges Ukraine is facing in its third year of war. Some, like him, are wounded infantrymen, put on the guns further back from the front. Others are older, while one of his team is on his first day in artillery.

For nearly two years, Kharkiv thought the threat from its neighbour had passed. A lightning Russian retreat in late 2022 left Kharkiv region peaceful and the launchpad for Ukrainian attacks across the border into Russia proper. Attacks persisted in the distance however, keeping the city’s residents awake through violently loud nights, now amplified by the threat of Russian artillery edging closer. Flares, anti-aircraft fire, and blasts regularly punctuate the enforced blackout, as Russian drones, rockets and airstrikes hit targets in the dark.

On Wednesday, city officials reported an attack on a gas station, which left four people in hospital. On Sunday, two missiles struck a lakeside resort in Cherkaska Lozova, outside the city — a horrifying attack on a civilian target which also used a “double-tap” tactic, in which a second missile hit 10 minutes after the first, injuring first responders.

A few hours after Sunday’s blasts, rescue workers clambered over the ruins of a waterside terrace, retrieving two bodies from the seven who died in the attack. One was a woman, seven months pregnant. Another was only found later, their body fragments in the wreckage. As police combed the eviscerated terrace on the lake for evidence, another air alert sounded, causing half the workers to flee for cover, and some to carry on, almost oblivious.

Source: CNN

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Testimonies gathered by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) highlight the terrifying impact on civilians

OHCHR spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell gave this UN briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

Testimonies gathered by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) highlight the terrifying impact on civilians of the recent escalation in hostilities in the north-east of the country, where Russian armed forces have seized control of several villages.

People who have fled from these areas along the Kharkiv region frontline described having to shelter for days in cold, dark basements, with no electricity amid intense aerial bombardment, strikes by drones and missiles, and artillery shelling.

There has been massive destruction of people’s homes and other civilian infrastructure. Entire communities have been uprooted and destroyed, with more than 10,000 people displaced to date.

According to HRMMU, at least 35 civilians have been killed and 137 injured in the Kharkiv region since Russian armed forces launched their cross-border offensive on 10 May. Of those killed or injured in the northern part of the region, which has seen the heaviest fighting, more than half were over the age of 60. This reflects the disproportionate number of older people in border and frontline areas, who, in many cases, were either unable or unwilling to leave their homes even amid a fast-deteriorating security situation.

Since 10 May, our HRMMU teams have interviewed 90 displaced civilians and have visited several sites that were struck.

Some were unable to reach shelters or even get to a basement. People described seeing their neighbours killed or injured.

 Some said the situation was so bad they decided to risk walking for several kilometres to reach an evacuation point.

Local authorities and volunteers have taken major risks to help vulnerable people to get to safety. On 16 May, two medical workers, two ambulance drivers and a local official were injured while they were trying to get civilians out of the village of Buhaivka.

On the morning of 19 May, Russian armed forces struck a recreation centre in the village of Cherkaska Lozova near Kharkiv city. Less than 20 minutes later, the site was hit again when police and medical workers were already on the scene to assist the victims. HRMMU monitors visited the location and documented the deaths of at least six civilians, with dozens of people injured.

Many of those evacuated from Vovchansk and other areas have arrived in Kharkiv city, which also remains under attack. In Kharkiv, there were multiple missile strikes on Thursday, reportedly killing seven civilians and injuring 21 others.

We call again on the Russian Federation to strictly respect all the rules of international law relating to the conduct of hostilities, and to cease its attacks on Ukraine immediately.

In the third year of the Russian Federation’s full-scale armed attack on Ukraine, with no end in sight, lives, homes, and futures continue to be destroyed. The long-term impact of this war in Ukraine will be felt for generations, with the task of rebuilding shattered communities, already a massive undertaking, growing larger with every further day of violence and destruction.

Source: OHCHR

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How Delays in Western Aid Gave Russia the Initiative: From the Ukrainian Counteroffensive to Kharkiv (A Special Report)

The Institute on the Study of War (ISW) presented an analysis of the escalation of the Russian offensive in the past several months.  A principal reason was the delay in the Western aid to Ukraine that gave Russia the opportunity to mount an aggressive offense.  The ISW has tracked the progression of the conflict during this time when Ukraine was unable to respond appropriately to the Russian aggression.

Below are highlights of that analysis.  Details may be accessed from the provided link.

May 22, 2024

Ukraine and the West have defeated a months-long Russian effort to persuade the West to abandon Ukraine and set conditions to collapse Ukrainian defenses. 

Russian forces have conducted offensive operations since Fall 2023 that aimed to convince the West to abandon its commitment to Ukraine, and prolonged US debates about security assistance likely convinced the Kremlin that its efforts had partially succeeded. The effects of continued delays in US and Western security assistance set conditions for Russian forces to make more significant gains on the battlefield than they had previously been able to make.  The Russian military command likely concluded that Russian forces would be able to collapse the Ukrainian frontline at some point in the near to medium term.

October and November 2023

Russia fails to seize Avdiivka but does seize the theater-wide initiative.

Russian forces launched localized offensive operations throughout eastern Ukraine in the Fall of 2023 in an effort to seize the theater-wide initiative and convince the West that the war was "stalemated" and that continued support for Ukraine was futile. Russian forces had successfully defended against the Summer 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive

Russian forces initially sought to conduct a rapid operational encirclement of Avdiivka in October 2023 to demoralize the West and quickly force Ukraine to cede the theater-wide initiative but failed to do so.  

Russian forces conducted mass mechanized assaults in the Avdiivka area from October 10 to October 16, shortly after the tempo of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in western Zaporizhia Oblast had begun to slow in September.

December 2023

An increasingly confident Kremlin

The Kremlin likely became convinced by mid-winter that it had succeeded in weakening Western support for Ukraine. Putin and the Kremlin had cautiously discussed the war in public for much of the full-scale invasion and only briefly touched on their strategic goals for the war.[20] Putin and the Kremlin notably shifted their public rhetoric in December, however, reengaging with expansionist rhetoric.

Russian forces began preparations for intensified offensive efforts in Ukraine in December 2023 and early January 2024 that indicated that the Russian military command likely assessed that tactically and operationally significant gains were possible. Russian sources claimed in early January that Russian forces were preparing to launch a new offensive effort once the ground froze in eastern Ukraine.

January and February 2024

Russian forces intensify offensive efforts and pursue more operationally significant gains

Russian forces significantly intensified offensive operations around Avdiivka and launched their Winter-Spring 2024 offensive operation on the Kharkiv-Luhansk axis roughly at the same time in mid-January. Russian forces intensified their use of armored vehicles to transport infantry to the frontline near Avdiivka on January 16 and reportedly entered Avdiivka as of January 19.

Russian forces concentrated significant manpower and materiel on their effort to seize Avdiivka in mid-February and achieved their tactical objective in the area at high cost. Russian forces made tactical gains in northern Avdiivka between February 2 and 8.

March and April 2024

Russia sees opportunities for the destabilization and collapse of the Ukrainian defense.

The Russian seizure of Avdiivka prominently highlighted the way in which Ukrainian materiel constraints were facilitating Russian advances, and the Russian military command likely saw prospects for destabilizing Ukrainian defenses on a larger scale following the seizure of Avdiivka. Russian forces conducted upwards of 100 glide bomb strikes against Avdiivka per day in the final weeks of the offensive effort to seize the settlement.

Russian forces also began approaching the outskirts of Chasiv Yar in March, setting conditions to pursue an operationally significant objective west of Bakhmut.  

Russian forces intensified mechanized assaults throughout eastern Ukraine in late March and early April and increased their general offensive tempo into April in order to destabilize the Ukrainian defense further.

Russian forces also resumed efforts to collapse Ukraine's energy grid in late March, likely viewing degrading Ukrainian air defense capabilities as an opportunity to cause significant long-term damage to Ukrainian war fighting capabilities and set conditions for significant gains on the battlefield.

May 2024 and Beyond

A closing window for Russian tactical gains and the approaching Russian summer offensive effort

The resumption of US security assistance to Ukraine at the end of April was a critical turning point in the war and created a limited window for Russian forces to pursue tactically significant gains. It will still take several weeks for US security assistance to arrive to Ukrainian forces at the front at scale, and Russian forces have intensified offensive operations in certain sectors and maintained their offensive tempo in others to take advantage of the limited window before the large-scale arrival of new US aid at the front.

Russian forces launched limited offensive operations along the Russian-Ukrainian border in northern Kharkiv Oblast on May 10 and may have started the operation earlier than intended due to the resumption of US security assistance.

The Russian military command likely envisioned that simultaneous offensive efforts towards Kharkiv City and along the current frontline in eastern Ukraine would stretch and overwhelm poorly-provisioned and undermanned Ukrainian forces and allow Russian forces to achieve a major breakthrough in at least one sector of the frontline.

The past seven months of fighting have likely solidified Putin's calculus that he can continue gradual creeping advances in Ukraine without the threat of a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive operation. Ukrainian forces have not regained tactically significant territory from Russian forces since Russian forces resumed offensive operations in October 2023, and Ukrainian tactical counterattacks have largely only staved off further Russian gains.

Russian efforts to convince the West to abandon Ukraine are not over. Recent months have proven to Russia that morale is Ukraine's and the West's center of gravity in this war. While Ukrainian morale has held firm, the weakening of Western morale and support for Ukraine quickly began to express itself on the battlefield and created conditions that convinced Russia that operationally significant gains were possible.

Source: ISW

Orthopedic resident of the National Institute of Medicine's Orthopedic clinic in Kyiv, receiving a portable ultrasound machine, donated by Ms. Erica Smith of Hospital Sisters' Mission Outreach. ©ICMC