SP1. Severity, people in need, planned reach and people prioritized
“This is our home, and we are determined to stay, but life here has become extremely hard for our residents. There are no working shops; our resources are almost exhausted, and the shelling continues to damage more houses. Under these conditions, every delivery of aid, whether food, medical supplies, or hygiene items, helps us get through another day. The humanitarian partners brought us supplies we urgently needed, and for that, we are deeply grateful,” — said Liliya, a community leader in a village in Khersonska Oblast.
Summary of needs
In 2026, 3.1 million people are expected to require humanitarian assistance under Strategic Priority 1, which represents the highest level of humanitarian needs in Ukraine. The priority focuses on populations residing within 0 to 50 kilometres of front-line and the northern border Chernihivska, Dnipropetrovska, Donetska, Kharkivska, Khersonska, Mykolaivska, Sumska and Zaporizka oblasts. These communities face the most severe and acute humanitarian needs, directly resulting from prolonged exposure to active hostilities and the systemic degradation of essential services.
Humanitarian needs in the front-line areas are primarily driven by the direct impact of hostilities, resulting in civilian displacement, casualties, physical and mental trauma, widespread destruction and loss of housing, personal property and critical infrastructure; and the subsequent collapse of basic service delivery, particularly in health, water, energy, education, social protection as well as food and agriculture livelihood, leaving the most vulnerable groups who remain in these areas without critical support. These challenges are compounded by access constraints, harsh winter conditions and pervasive insecurity.
The impact is most severe on vulnerable groups, who are often the last to flee hostilities and therefore remain without family support. Older people and people with disabilities often face heightened risks due to limited access to health care and social assistance, and additional barriers to safe evacuations. Women and girls experience increased exposure to gender-based and conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). They also face barriers in accessing maternal, child and reproductive health services. Children and adolescents suffer from profound trauma and disruption in their education. Internally displaced people in the front-line zones endure precarious daily living conditions and the threat of repeated displacement.
Needs also vary between rural areas and urban centres—with populations in urban centres, facing heightened vulnerability due to recurrent disruptions to essential services such as centralized heating, water and electricity resulting from targeted attacks, including those on health care and education. These challenges are further compounded by market inflation, fixed or reduced household incomes, which constrain access to essential goods and services. In contrast, rural communities face deeper structural gaps because of damaged infrastructure, gaps in health care due to shortages of essential health workers and limited coverage of basic services. The challenges of re-establishing services amid demining constraints and limited infrastructure mean that, even in a scenario of reduced hostilities, humanitarian needs in front-line areas will persist.
The response under this Strategic Priority is informed by protection, age, gender and disability analyses. All interventions are guided by the ‘do no harm’ approach, ensuring that assistance mitigates protection risks to humanitarian workers and people who remain, avoiding unintended negative consequences for affected people. This is operationalized through the systematic use of community feedback, which directly informs context-specific, conflict-sensitive programming. While households across front-line areas express broadly similar preferences for assistance, some note their preference for cash-based support, even though they face constraints to access financial services and suppliers who are not able to travel to the front-line areas. For example, the significantly higher demand for solid fuel in the 0 to 20 km zone (16 per cent compared to 7 per cent in the 21 to 50 km zone) directly informs the prioritization of tailored winterization support in these areas. Similarly, evidence that households closest to the front line are more likely to have recently received assistance strengthens and refines targeting and sequencing decisions.
Scope of Strategic Priority and Managing Overlaps
Strategic Priority 1 (SP1) supports life-saving assistance to civilians who remain in the 0 to 50 km zone along the front line and areas bordering the Russian Federation, where the intensity of conflict, displacement and the collapse of essential services are most severe. This geographic scope is defined by the highest level of humanitarian needs, driven by active hostilities and the systemic degradation of public infrastructure and services. Operational priority will remain in the 0 to 20 km zone, where needs are most severe and life-threatening. The 20–50 km zone provides operational flexibility to respond to shifts on the front line and sustain operational capacity in support of people within the most exposed areas. Assistance in this zone will be guided by additional vulnerability criteria to ensure targeting of the most at-risk households.
Operationally, Strategic Priority 1 serves as the anchor of the response continuum and is intrinsically linked to other priorities to ensure coherence. Strategic Priority 1 directly connects to Strategic Priority 2 in the 0 to 20 km area, where Strategic Priority 1 supports populations in situ, while Strategic Priority 2 supports those who flee to seek safety. Simultaneously, Strategic Priority 1 is linked to Strategic Priority 4 in the 20–50 km zone, addressing the fluidity between front-line residents and displaced people. While Strategic Priority 3 addresses specific impacts of strikes within and outside the 0-50 km zone, Strategic Priority 1 addresses the persistent, systemic life-saving needs generated by continuous hostilities within its scope. This clearly defined yet connected framing enables principled life-saving assistance while supporting seamless transitions for people moving between different phases of need across the humanitarian response.
Given the dynamic operational context in the front line, marked by an intensifying northern front, a relatively fluid eastern front line and a southern front line defined by the Dnipro River, maintaining a sustained humanitarian presence is critical for delivering multisectoral response support where critical services have collapsed or become severely limited. Assistance will prioritize the most vulnerable, including older people, people with disabilities, women and girls at risk, children, and the repeatedly displaced people in the 0-20 km zone, ensuring principled and life-saving support.
Response Strategy
In 2026, 2.7 million people will be assisted under Strategic Priority 1 through two complementary, multisectoral response packages tailored to the 0 to 50-km front-line zone:
- Critical front-line assistance will support people directly exposed to active hostilities and aligns with the life-saving objective of the HNRP to deliver multisectoral interventions in areas of active hostilities and systemic collapse in critical services. This includes distributing life-saving supplies in food, emergency shelter and non-food items, hygiene items and dignity kits, as well as water, such as through water trucking, deploying mobile health and protection teams, including child protection and GBV, providing emergency trauma care, mental health and psychosocial support, legal assistance and life-saving information and case management. Cash (and voucher) modalities will be considered where market functionality allows.
- Supporting the continuity of access to basic services, preserving the dignity of the affected people and preventing a further deterioration of humanitarian conditions. This includes during extreme weather events (winter heating/summer heat), repairs and reinforcement of critical infrastructure to maintain access to essential services, such as health, water, education and protection, as well as transportation for the most vulnerable to access social services.
These packages are differentiated by purpose, timeframe and modality. Delivery modality, including cash, voucher, service delivery or in-kind assistance, will be grounded in continuous, context-specific assessments of market functionality, security conditions, access to financial services and beneficiary preferences, ensuring appropriateness and safety.
Throughout the implementation process, the response will complement and reinforce existing Government systems wherever they are functional, aligning with national priorities to avoid parallel structures while strengthening community-based protection mechanisms. Humanitarian actors will focus on addressing critical gaps in capacity and access beyond state coverage, including the provision of integrated life-saving primary health care and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) services, case management, as well as the delivery of humanitarian repairs to damaged facilities in collaboration with the compensation programme. This support will remain essential as long as active hostilities, access and legal constraints continue to restrict vulnerable people’s full access to essential services in the front-line zone.
Targeting and Prioritization
For the 2026 response, assistance will be prioritized based on the severity of the geographic area and the vulnerability of the population. The people remaining in the 0 to 50 km front-line zone will be considered for humanitarian assistance, with the most vulnerable in the 0 to 20 km sub-zone receiving utmost priority due to intense hostilities and systemic service collapse.
Targeting will apply a layered methodology. While all populations within the 0-20 km zone are considered at risk and vulnerable; overall, in the 0-50 km, people to be assisted will be targeted through vulnerability criteria, including age, disability, gender and displacement status, to ensure the most vulnerable are prioritized.
Vulnerable population groups will be identified through a combination of geographic exposure and vulnerability criteria derived from the Multi-Sectoral Needs Assessments (MSNA). Older people and people with disabilities, often unable to evacuate, women and girls at heightened risk of GBV, children and adolescents experiencing trauma (including psychological) and disruption in education, IDPs, particularly those experiencing repeated displacement, will continue to be supported with multisectoral assistance. Households with very low socio-economic status and at increased risk of adopting harmful coping strategies will also require assistance.