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Volunteers, charitable foundations, and public organizations have become a support for many Kherson residents today. When a house is destroyed after shelling, documents are lost, or relatives are injured, people do not always know where to run and what to do. That is when not just humanitarian aid is important, but a live presence, support, and quick response.
We talk about what kind of help wounded civilians can receive with Mykyta Mikhalkov, the local coordinator of the Caritas-Spes-Odesa organization, which works with civilians injured as a result of shelling in Kherson and the region.
Caritas Spes Odesa provides assistance to those in need in the Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson regions. Since 1999, the organization has been caring for people's physical, moral, and psychological well-being. Special attention is paid to families with children and socially vulnerable categories of the population. Since July 2025, the organization has been implementing a project to assist and support wounded civilians in the Kherson region. The target audience of the project is not only people who suffered from shelling and drone attacks in Kherson and the region, but also the families of the deceased. Representatives of the organization assist victims with registration for assistance, document processing, and obtaining necessary certificates.
Mykyta Mikhalkov says that, initially, when the project was founded, it was planned to establish an office in one of Kherson's safer districts. But the idea of accepting people there was abandoned: “I think it is unethical to force a person with an amputation or a fresh wound to travel through half the city under shelling to register for assistance. Therefore, my colleague and I go to hospitals in person. Sometimes we have to literally look for a person - contacts are not always transmitted correctly.”
This is daily work, with no days off. Calls, meetings, repeat visits, clarifications, meetings again. According to Mykyta, in some months up to 270 wounded civilians were recorded. These include severe injuries with amputations, mine and blast injuries, and contusions. The project focuses on moderate and severe injuries for which funds are urgently needed. According to Mykyta Mikhalkov, their program is very well-established, and from submitting a questionnaire to receiving funds, it takes from one to seven days.
“The format of assistance is financial payments. UAH 10,800 per family member. If one person is injured, you can register up to 4 household members — that’s up to UAH 43,200. And it really works,” says Mykyta.
Mykyta Mikhalkov says that at the start of the project, it was unclear where to get the lists of the wounded. Later, they established cooperation with the military administration: every week, the team receives new lists and reports on those already registered. According to Mykyta, the cooperation is generally working. There are contact persons and an opportunity to clarify complex cases. “In fact, the military administration, as far as it is at all realistic, really helps us with flexibility in our work. Sometimes, some points cannot be resolved quickly due to bureaucratic red tape, and we try to avoid it. The biggest problem in this project is deduplication,” says Mykyta.
By this term, Mykyta means a situation in which a person is simultaneously registered with different organizations for financial assistance. For example, a person applied to one of the organizations, waited a long time for a response, eventually received a rejection, or received no response at all. Later, she was injured. Mykyta tries to register her for the emergency assistance program, but the system shows that the applicant is “waiting” for another payment. As a result, the assistance is automatically blocked for three months.
Such situations are repeated and accumulate. People are left without the necessary support, not because of abuse or fraud, but because of the slowness of procedures and the lack of proper coordination between organizations/
After the de-occupation, many donors began to appear in the right-bank Kherson region. Even then, they were trying to figure out where to invest their money, and the issue of restoration was very relevant. Unfortunately, many projects are currently frozen for various reasons. According to Mykyta, for future restoration, it is necessary to improve coordination between the organizations themselves: “It is important to create a simple mechanism for submitting needs, so that condominium associations, communities, or initiative groups can submit applications, and the organizations can see what has already been closed and what still needs support. It seems to me that this is the most transparent option, which would be very supported by donors from the West, so they really just have a hyperfixation on reporting. It is a matter of the desire and interest of the organizations themselves, including the authorities.” This will also help avoid duplication, when a community submits the same project to different organizations, and the chaos that was, for example, during the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, when everyone was bringing aid, and there was no coordination at all.
During the interview, we raised the difficult issue of some donors and organizations' lack of understanding of the situation on the ground. “This “disconnection from reality” is connected with a lack of understanding of the needs at the local level, because many organizations are not there. Many organizations are prohibited by their charter from visiting the “red zones”. I would like them to reconsider their priorities, reassure donors that certain activities are no longer needed, and shift them to a more specific activity in a particular zone, as the situation is dynamic. My personal opinion is that this “disconnection from reality” is also due to the unwillingness to communicate and hear people more.”
One way or another, many donors and programs are already moving away from humanitarian aid and toward the reconstruction and development of communities. We also asked Mykyta Mykhalkov whether it is appropriate to start these strategic processes now, given the security situation: “Administrations must be involved in this to direct funds, because donors will not cooperate without the involvement of local administrations. Reconstruction is not only about building housing, but it is also about cleaning up after shelling, demining, and so on. And it must be started when a problem arises. Of course, everything is complicated by shelling now, and full-fledged reconstruction is possible only after the cessation of active hostilities.”
What will Kherson of the future be like, whether those who left will return, or new people will come - this is an open question. On a personal level, Mykyta says simply: “I would like to move here to live. Fully. Settle in, move a girlfriend, get cats.” But a lot depends on the security situation. Now the main thing is to support those who stay here. And in the end, it all comes down to a simple question: “Do people really want to do something useful for Kherson?” Because aid is not about reporting and numbers. It’s about specific people.
We invite Kherson residents to participate in an anonymous survey to better understand the moods, needs, and challenges faced by the Kherson region's population, and to assess the effectiveness of public organizations and authorities' work. Each of your answers is a crucial brick in the foundation of your future recovery. Your answers are completely anonymous and will be used exclusively in a generalized form for analytical purposes.
The interview has been produced by the Kherson Regional Charitable Foundation “Union” with the support of the European Endowment for Democracy (EED). Its contents do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of EED. Responsibility for the information and views expressed in this publication lies entirely with the authors.
