UN aide in Kyiv warns sustained humanitarian needs after renewed attacks on cities

Denise Brown, the United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, said renewed missile strikes in early February that hit multiple regions have intensified immediate civilian needs and will leave long-term recovery requirements even if hostilities end quickly.

Brown, speaking from Kyiv, said the attacks—which an interviewer summarized as having struck six regions and killed at least five people—produce an ‘‘immediate reaction of fear’’ and require coordinated first-responder and humanitarian action, including psychosocial support and urgent repairs to damaged windows, doors and roofs. "When schools or clinics are hit," she said, "there is loss of access to a doctor, to a nurse, or to a clinic, to a school."

The coordinator described the UN response in the regions as routed through the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and local authorities. "We have a network of over 500 partners," she said, "and the local actors are the closest to where these things happen; they deploy immediately, and we support them." Brown said the UN has more than 3,000 staff deployed across cities including Kharkiv, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk.

Brown warned that without the UN and its partners, gaps would be larger. She cited displacement and emigration figures discussed in the interview: more than 4,000,000 internally displaced people and about 6,000,000 who have left the country. "We fill a gap, but we fill it in coordination with the authorities," she said, adding that the UN does not cover 100% of needs.

On planning for an extended conflict, Brown said the damage is overwhelming and the humanitarian and recovery needs will remain enormous even if the war ends tomorrow. "It will take years and years to rebuild this country and years and years for the country to deal with the trauma," she said. She also named a rise in gender-based violence and wide economic damage among the humanitarian consequences.

The interview emphasized two operational points: (1) immediate priorities are life-saving supplies, emergency repairs, food or cash and psychosocial services; (2) coordination is centered on OCHA and local partners who can deploy rapidly in oblasts along the frontline. Brown framed the UN’s presence in affected communities as both a practical delivery mechanism and an important signal of solidarity to local authorities and residents.

The conversation noted comments by UN political affairs leadership about the absence of an end to the war and underscored Brown’s view that long-term recovery planning and sustained donor support are necessary. The UN coordinator said that, given the scale of displacement and infrastructure damage, international humanitarian and recovery assistance will be needed for the foreseeable future.