“We've had to adapt to some extreme circumstances”, UN Humanitarian chief in Ukraine explained in a rare interview with UN News.
Denise Brown is the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine.
She spoke to Conor Lennon about the challenges of supporting communities in a country at war.
She says UN’s major focus is to support the Ukrainian people, especially with the delivery of relief items. “We are working as close as possible to the front line, which requires meticulous planning and coordination”, she details.

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Denise Brown is the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine.

Based in the capital Kyiv, she works alongside around 20 UN agencies with some 2,600 staff, the majority Ukrainians.

She spoke to UN News about the challenges of supporting communities in a country at war.

“Conditions have been pretty difficult in Ukraine over the past year and we've had to adapt to some extreme circumstances.

There are constant air raid sirens, which means we are dashing in and out of the bunker all day long. In the past 12 months we’ve calculated that we’ve spent more than a month there holding meetings of all types, including with the Humanitarian Country Team or UN Member States.

Supporting the Ukrainian people
Our days here are too often unpredictable. There is no typical day, but one I remember very clearly was 10th October when the centre of Kyiv was hit by air strikes at 8.20am just 1.2 kilometres from my office. When I heard that explosion and the office started shaking, I thought “oh now would be a good time” to get into that bunker.

Our major focus is to support the Ukrainian people, especially with the delivery of relief items. We are working as close as possible to the front line, which requires meticulous planning and coordination.

I regularly visit front-line communities because I'm really insistent that UN staff are involved in these most difficult deliveries. We have the capacity, experience and resources. So, we spend quite a bit of time in places like Kherson, but also in different communities of the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.

In November, there was such hope when Kherson was retaken by the Ukrainian Government. Three days later, we were there and it was quite moving. There were people out on the streets, waving at us when we entered the city with trucks full of supplies. But several months later, as you saw last week, there were continued airstrikes in the middle of the city and civilians were killed; volunteers have been killed, aid workers have been injured. It feels like it's never going to end in Kherson.

But also, what's never ending in Kherson is the strength and the hope of the people who stayed there and who have told me they will not leave. This is a real testament to the strength, conviction and resilience of the Ukrainian population.

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