Strikes on UN warehouses push aid money from delivery to protection

The United Nations is contemplating relocating humanitarian supplies to underground facilities following a series of strikes on 10 of its warehouses in Ukraine this year, with the destruction of millions of dollars' worth of aid. Matthias Schmale, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine, revealed this on September 15. The repeated strikes on aid warehouses have compelled the UN to reconsider its storage and procurement methods, with some funds now allocated towards safeguarding supplies rather than distributing them.

Schmale informed Reuters, after consultations with states in Geneva, that these deliberate attacks on warehouse capacities represent a rising trend over the past few months. The strikes have devastated medical supplies, food, and generators valued in the millions across Ukraine. On September 3, an air attack obliterated a major medical-supplies warehouse in Kyiv, following two additional medical-supply warehouses destroyed in Dnipro in late August, which annihilated half the supplies designated for approximately 225,000 people in frontline and hard-to-reach areas.

In July, an assault on a warehouse close to Kyiv destroyed nearly $3.9 million in UNICEF supplies, encompassing power generators, water supplies, and hygiene kits. In May, an Iskander missile strike on a World Food Programme warehouse in Dnipro destroyed food intended for almost 130,000 individuals. Schmale suggested the UN is currently deliberating whether to store supplies underground instead of in traditional warehouses and is postponing certain acquisitions while determining how to safeguard what it purchases.

These enhanced security expenses add to an already cash-strapped aid operation: the UN's 2026 humanitarian appeal for Ukraine aims at $2.3 billion to reach 4.1 million people.