Humanitarian Response Needs and Security Challenges in Communities in the South

Publication date: September 16, 2026

During the first 9 months of 2026, 3,072 humanitarian needs were recorded on the LINK platform, which is administered by the Legal Development Network. These are requests from residents of 25 de-occupied communities in the South, of which 1,352 came from the Mykolaiv Oblast and 1,720 from the Kherson Oblast. One-third of the needs have already been met by humanitarian organizations and charitable foundations — LINK’s partners. As of September 1, another 1,000 needs remained unmet or were still being processed. In this article, we explore which needs are most common in the communities and how the security situation affects their fulfillment. This publication is based on analytical data from the platform and observations by the LINK team.

Trends in Humanitarian Needs — January–August 2026

In the Mykolaiv Oblast, the LINK platform covers 11 communities. Of the 1,352 humanitarian needs recorded in these communities between January and August, the majority — 1,060, or nearly 80% — have been met. In 14 communities in the Kherson Oblast, 1,720 needs were recorded, of which more than half — 56.5% — had been met as of September 1. Of the total number of needs recorded over the 9-month period, the majority (634) were related to healthcare, followed by housing and food needs (490). Rounding out the top three were needs related to water, hygiene, and sanitation (398 needs).

Most of the needs in the Mykolaiv Oblast also relate to the healthcare sector — 840, or 62%. The increase in these specific needs is the main trend of 2026. Since a significant portion of the entries consist of individual medication items, the surge can be explained in part by more detailed entries of specific needs into the database. 87% of healthcare-related requests were submitted to the LINK platform during the summer.

As for other sectors in the Mykolaiv Oblast, there has been a decline in the number of requests. While 75 needs were recorded in the water, hygiene, and sanitation sector in February, there were fewer in the following months. The peak for housing needs and non-food items occurred in March — 49 requests. By August, there were only 8 entries in this sector.

In contrast, in the Kherson Oblast, the peak months for requests submitted to the LINK platform were February (317) and March (359 needs). In February, most requests concerned healthcare and water, hygiene, and sanitation — 122 needs each. In March, housing and non-food items were the most common needs (196). In August, a total of 127 needs were recorded. 107 entries were related to healthcare, and 105 of them were submitted to the platform in a single day, indicating that a detailed list was uploaded in bulk.

In the Mykolaiv Oblast, of the 283 unmet needs, 147 relate to water, hygiene, and sanitation (52%); 60 (21%) to housing and non-food items; and 54 (19%) to healthcare. The most common requests concern hygiene kits, adult and children’s diapers, mobility aids, and drinking water.

Among the 717 needs that remain unmet in communities across the Kherson Oblast, the largest number of requests are for housing and non-food items (323, or 45%). There are also a significant number of requests in the areas of water, hygiene, and sanitation (235, or 33%). Next are needs in the areas of healthcare (59) and heating, gas, and electricity supply (59).

The Impact of Security Trends on Aid

In most communities in the Mykolaiv Oblast covered by LINK, the security situation as of September 1 remains unchanged. There are communities, such as Halytsynivska and Snigurivska, through which enemy UAVs transit daily. In some villages within these communities, residential buildings have been hit and destroyed. A constant threat looms over all communities.

In the Kherson Oblast, the impact of security factors is more pronounced. In communities such as Bilozerska, Novooleksandrivska, Milivska, Novorayska, Borozenska, Kalynivska, and a number of others, the danger escalated in the spring and summer of 2026. Due to frequent shelling, humanitarian organizations are unable to reach certain settlements, and people are leaving and evacuating from dangerous areas on their own.

In light of this, the most significant change reported by the LINK team is the increased difficulty in receiving aid directly at one’s place of residence in 14 of the communities. Humanitarian aid available in one of the community’s settlements may remain physically inaccessible to residents of neighboring villages, especially the elderly, those with limited mobility, or those without their own transportation.

Another trend LINK has observed in the Kherson Oblast is a decrease in the number of needs reported by communities where shelling is becoming more frequent, access to basic services is being lost, and people are leaving.

Implications for Coordination

Despite their shared status as de-occupied territories in the South, Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblast face somewhat different humanitarian realities. While in Mykolaiv Oblast, 20.9% of all needs recorded this year remain unmet, in Kherson Oblast this figure is twice as high — 41.7%. However, the higher recorded backlog does not indicate lower aid effectiveness, as communities differ in terms of accessibility, the complexity of needs, the timing of their submission, and the level of detail in record-keeping.

Healthcare remains a common denominator for both Oblast — and at the same time, an example of how carefully one should interpret these trends. The spike in medical requests during the summer is largely due to the technical details involved in entering specific medication items, rather than a sudden deterioration in the population’s health. This serves as a reminder: behind every number in the LINK database lies not only the scale of the need but also the method by which it was recorded.

The most important conclusion concerns access to aid. In the Kherson Oblast, the problem increasingly lies not in the lack of aid, but in its inaccessibility. In areas where shelling is most frequent, the number of registered needs is not rising but falling. This is not a sign that people’s situation has improved, but rather indicates that some people have either left or lost the ability to report their needs.

It would be advisable to track data on changes in the security situation, the ability to enter settlements, and methods of delivering and receiving aid separately going forward. The LINK team’s observations should be considered an indicator of the extent to which the security context determines the concept of aid accessibility in de-occupied territories.

This report was prepared by the Legal Development Network in collaboration with the Czech humanitarian organization “People in Need” and with financial support from the Government of the United Kingdom.

The conclusions, interpretations of the collected information, and other content presented in this report reflect solely the views of the authors and do not represent the views of the project’s donors and partners.

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