Ukraine: Staying warm through winter in Kharkiv Oblast

Valentyna and Volodymyr, Derhachi, Kharkiv Oblast

Valentyna has spent most of her life in Chuhuiv. She moves carefully, leaning on a cane. When the full-scale invasion began, leaving was never seriously considered — there was no straightforward way to travel, and the journey itself would have been too much. Her house took damage: cracks ran through the walls, the kitchen was badly hit, and windows were blown out.

A local organisation boarded up the openings with OSB panels, but the makeshift fix did little against the cold. The house had become hard to live in. Her longtime colleague Volodymyr, who owns a house in Derhachi, Kharkiv Oblast, invited her to stay. She said yes, and the two have lived together since.

Volodymyr's house in Derhachi needed work too. The old wooden windows let the cold in — a serious risk for someone with limited mobility. With 19,400 UAH [375 EUR] in cash assistance, Volodymyr covered heating costs for the full season and put what remained toward new flooring.

He was glad the money came when it did — building material prices in the region had been rising steadily, and he had managed to buy before the next surge. DRC's Shelter and Settlements team also replaced the old wooden windows in the house.

"The drafts stopped. The rooms were kept warm," says Valentyna. "It became cosy."

Larysa, Nova Hnylytsia

Larysa still tears up when she speaks about life in Kupiansk. She worked as an administrator at a dental clinic; her husband drove a bus. They had been paying off their car for years — the last instalment came in December 2021. After the escalation of the war in February 2022, Kupiansk was occupied. The family stayed. In 2025, Larysa was injured by shrapnel while working in her garden. As hostilities in the region intensified, the family made the decision to leave.

They left with their two elderly mothers and a few things they couldn't bear to leave behind: a dog, a parrot, a chinchilla, and a cat. They arrived in Nova Hnylytsia with almost nothing.

Their rented house needed serious work. "The roof had to be patched, the plot cleared, everything furnished from scratch," Larysa says. The family did it all themselves. That winter, they heated with a wood-burning stove — there was no gas connection. "Whatever savings we had went to an operation for my mother."

DRC provided the family with 19,400 UAH in cash assistance — enough to cover an immediate priority: firewood.  Through DRC’s case management support, which helps households identify and address additional needs, the family was also able to purchase a new solid-fuel furnace. With a more efficient heat source, the house stayed warm throughout the season.

For both households, DRC’s support went beyond the first request for assistance. The cash covered immediate heating costs, and follow-up brought the fuller picture into view — new windows for one family, a new furnace for another. Small changes, but ones that made it possible to get through the winter — thanks to funding from the European Union.