LocationsIn response to the challenges of war, UNDP and its partners have launched educational and social initiatives to support the frontline community
Zaporizhzhia: a city people want to stay in
April 14, 2026
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Zaporizhzhia has transformed into a humanitarian and social hub for communities under occupation or on the front line. The city had to learn quickly how to exist alongside the battlefield. However, for many, this moment of crisis became an opportunity to rediscover themselves, pursue new ambitions, and remain close to home.
To support residents and displaced persons, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ukraine, together with its partners, is helping to open training centres and safety spaces and to launch social projects. Within the industrial landscape of this frontline city, effective solutions are emerging, social ties are being rebuilt, and a resilient community is taking shape.
When the siren is a signal to act
Zaporizhzhia is one of Ukraine’s largest cities. This industrial centre was built around plants, factories and transport hubs on the banks of the Dnipro River, at the intersection of waterways connecting the south and east of Ukraine.
As of early 2026, the city sits just 20 kilometres from the front line, effectively on the edge of occupied territory.
The industrial districts of Zaporizhzhia traditionally take the first hits: explosions, large-scale blackouts and accidents. There is no time for hesitation. Reality teaches people to make decisions quickly and take responsibility in critical moments. Rescuers, power engineers, health care workers and other emergency specialists head out on shift along the same streets where their families live.
Zaporizhzhia sees few quiet days without shelling. Following an air raid siren, residents often hear the sound of drones or guided aerial bombs, followed by explosions. Then, the ‘Kobra’ appears on the streets. This is the local name for the municipal special emergency rescue service, which has been saving lives for 35 years, tackling accidents, traffic collisions, gas explosions or chemical leaks. Since 2022, it has also been clearing the aftermath of strikes on civilian infrastructure and removing rubble.
Kobra operates around the clock: three units are on duty at all times, totalling 18 rescuers. During mass attacks, two or three additional units are deployed, as shelling in Zaporizhzhia often destroys or damages five or even ten buildings at once. At these times, day and night merge for the rescuers.
Assistance from UNDP and the European Union (EU) has provided tangible support for a service burdened with so much work. Specialists are already working with equipment delivered in February 2025. As part of this same cooperation package, Kobra received a passenger vehicle to quickly transport rescuers from additional units to the sites of attacks.
At night, a mast with a generator transforms a dark city block into a well-lit site, reducing injuries among rescuers and speeding up the search for survivors. Cordless power cutters, chainsaws and jackhammers are critically important during rubble clearance, where the slightest wrong move can cost a life.
“After a strike, slabs fold like a house of cards. Heavy machinery often cannot get close. Then rescuers work by hand, clearing concrete piece by piece to reach people or remove dangerous structures. This is where cordless tools are essential,” recounts Roman Serhieiev, deputy head of the emergency rescue service.
The generators provided assist during deployments: improvised Points of Invincibility are set up at strike sites, where people can warm up, drink hot tea or charge their phones. For those who have lost their homes, heat and light are the first pillar of support.
Roman Serhieiev has been in the service for 24 years, entering the profession out of a desire to help people. Zaporizhzhia is home to his family. Despite having the opportunity to live in a safer city, his wife and daughter returned here.
He speaks of his team as old friends. The staff is currently at 95 percent capacity. Since the full-scale invasion began, the team has tripled in size. Alongside rescuers with 15-20 years of service, nearly 50 young specialists now work, some having joined Kobra after volunteering to clear rubble or having experienced shelling themselves.
Operational duty begins when panic ends. There is no shouting or fuss – only a few brief commands, and everyone knows exactly what to do.
“For us, Zaporizhzhia is still an industrial giant that is holding on despite the hits, and trying to recover every day: boarding up thousands of shattered windows, fixing damaged roofs, and giving people a chance to stay in their homes,” Roman added.
New equipment for medics
Like Kobra, the emergency medical service in Zaporizhzhia operates without pause: the fleet is constantly deployed, staff risk their lives daily, and the need for new vehicles and equipment remains critical.
Alina Dubinina, deputy director for general affairs and development at the Zaporizhzhia Oblast Centre for Emergency Medical Care and Disaster Medicine, explained that their ambulances run 24/7. To plan fleet upgrades and compensate for losses caused by shelling, reserve vehicles are essential. In the village of Bilenke near Zaporizhzhia, for example, a Russian drone struck a medical service vehicle. The staff were unhurt, but the Centre lost the vehicle entirely.
“In the last few months of 2025, two of our vehicles were damaged due to hostilities. One is beyond repair. Therefore, every new vehicle received from UNDP and its partners significantly assists our Centre’s work. For instance, some transport serves the Oleksandrivskyi district of the city, while others ensure deployments to settlements close to the front, where roads – especially in bad weather – are difficult and unpredictable,” Alina Dubinina explained.
All emergency medical vehicles are equipped according to state standards, from resuscitation and diagnostic equipment to means for safe patient transport. These ambulances are mobile intensive care units capable of operating safely in wartime conditions. The vehicle the Centre received from UNDP in 2023 serves the villages of Tavriiske and Veselianka and the settlement of Kushuhum. These are the very settlements that suffer most from Russian shelling.
The Zaporizhzhia Oblast Centre for Emergency Medical Care and Disaster Medicine calculated that, in 2025, each of their vehicles went out on a call an average of 2,367 times. Behind these figures are thousands of lives saved against a backdrop of sirens and explosions.
Thanks to cooperation with UNDP and the EU, the emergency service has also updated medical equipment: defibrillators for children and adults, medical monitors and other hardware.
“My colleagues are delighted when a new, equipped vehicle appears, ready for operation at any moment. The efficiency and morale of the crew – who spend most of their working time in these vehicles – depend on it,” Alina added.
In this team, she says, they “hold onto personnel with all their might.” Staffing issues are acute: overwork, and surge in calls caused by shelling, and the tendency of young specialists to choose safer regions. Part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast remains under occupation, further reducing the pool of available professionals. The medical service now seeks employees to recruit specialists who were forced to leave their homes elsewhere and have found a new one in this city.
For Alina personally, Zaporizhzhia is home. She was born here and has worked in emergency medical care for nine years.
“I love being useful. It might initially seem to some that Zaporizhzhia is grey, but many people remain here, small businesses are opening, and NGOs are working. I believe it is a beautiful city. Give it a chance to live, and it will live,” Alina concluded.
To preserve what remains
After every Russian strike, rescuers are the first to head to the impact sites in Zaporizhzhia, followed by police and special services. Once people are saved, the rubble is cleared, and the security situation is relatively stable, Zaporizhzhia City Council’s mobile commission for inspecting the technical state of buildings begins its work.
Their task is to check every crack, floor, loadbearing wall and utility network. They need to assess at least three or four addresses every day.
The commission’s decisions determine whether owners can receive compensation to rebuild their homes or businesses. Previously, the commission faced difficulties reaching people. Here, too, the city utilized opportunities for cooperation with UNDP and the EU, through which the community received a specially equipped vehicle, solving this logistical problem.
The vehicle accommodates seven people, including the driver. Inside is a mobile headquarters: measuring instruments and equipment to assess the scale of destruction. This allows the expert commission to quickly determine whether it is possible to rebuild or only demolish.
Before this, there were no equivalents to such a vehicle in Zaporizhzhia, a city where war has destroyed hundreds of buildings. The car is equipped with everything from helmets to ultrasonic thickness gauges (used to measure material thickness), arthroscopes (tools for inspecting openings in buildings), video endoscopes (cameras on a probe that allow the inspection of floors, pipes and ventilation), Schmidt hammers (devices for determining the strength of building materials), thermal imagers (opto-electronic devices that detect infrared radiation), and a portable charging station.
“Now we can save more time and head out to new sites more promptly,” commission member Andrii Shkola, a technical inspection expert at the “Hradproekt” municipal enterprise, said.
A delay of even one hour on the road matters significantly: if a building is not weatherproofed in time, rain or snow can destroy what remains.
After the shelling of Zaporizhzhia on 24 February 2026, Andrii Shkola had to assess the damage in his own apartment. His family’s home was reduced to an empty shell – without windows or doors, with only soot‑blackened walls left behind. The destruction was caused by a drone strike, with the engine crashing directly into the expert’s kitchen. The stairwell still smells of burning, shattered glass crunches underfoot – this apartment block is just one of many that will take a long time to recover from the consequences of Russian attacks.
To learn to live differently
Olha Leontieva – head of the Melitopol volunteer group ‘Patriot’ – is originally from Melitopol, a large industrial city near the Sea of Azov that has been under occupation since March 2022. At home, she was an entrepreneur and worked with social projects. Since her forced displacement, she has continued to help her fellow citizens.
Zaporizhzhia, she says, stands out from other frontline cities because many people from surrounding occupied communities are choosing to build their new lives here rather than move further away. Olha and her volunteers were once involved in organizing evacuations, helping residents from Donetsk or Kherson oblasts – where active fighting continued – reach Zaporizhzhia through humanitarian corridors.
Today, Olha Leontieva heads the Community Security and Social Cohesion Working Group, which brings together local authorities, the public, police and rescuers. Meeting every two months since 2019, the group discusses security challenges, initiatives and projects, searching for shared solutions. Similar consultative-advisory bodies were established in several communities with UNDP support. Zaporizhzhia Oblast is also unique in having created an oblast-level working group – the only one of its kind in Ukraine – even joined by the prosecutor’s office. There are no formal restrictions on participation: anyone ready to contribute is welcome.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the working group has transformed into a real network of interaction. Over the years, dozens of projects have been implemented on its initiative: ‘green rooms’ for the police, a youth centre, cybersecurity events, and support for displaced persons and mental health.
For Olha, every project is important because it is about people. Feedback is what keeps her from burning out.
“When – after training on non-violent communication – a man admits he has repaired his relationship with his family, you feel the true scale of that impact,” she said.
She sees how the community’s requests have changed over time: while at the start of the invasion, specialists in Zaporizhzhia required basics – equipment, furniture and the ability to work – they now increasingly speak of education, new competencies, changing mindsets, working with artificial intelligence, and psychological resilience. They do not want to just survive, but also to learn to live differently.
Zaporizhzhia, Olha insists, is a city of the invincible. A city that restores light after seven hours of blackouts and simultaneously thinks about development. A city where displaced people do not feel like strangers, and there is a place for everyone.
New connections for youth
On the initiative of young Melitopol residents who left home due to the occupation, a youth centre began operating in Zaporizhzhia in spring 2024. As a result of the invasion, they lost their homes and friends. Now, in a new place, Melitopol youth are building new connections.
Aliona Kuznietsova, a senior specialist at the Melitopol City Council’s Department of Culture and Youth, explains that when they arrived in Zaporizhzhia they had no place to gather and discuss the project ideas they wanted to implement. They took this to the local authorities. Ultimately, the initiative received support from UNDP and the EU, which helped them to purchase furniture, equipment and materials to renovate the premises.
The 317 square metres of the youth centre contain seven rooms, two co-working spaces, training offices, a kitchen, bathrooms and storage. These walls once housed a bank; now they have been transformed into a space for learning, socializing and creativity.
The team responds flexibly to requests and quickly implements ideas. Some start with hobbies, while others master new professional skills, and some find jobs.
“The youth centre works with initiatives for young people. When you leave your hometown, you are often left alone. In this space, however, you can feel support, share ideas and receive feedback. For us, the result is not the number of visitors, but their success stories. We are often told, ‘You helped me, I can do more now, I have changed,’ and that is the best feedback,” Aliona said.
To seek help from the police and lawyers
The youth centre is not the only initiative designed to support those who have lost their homes. These include the mobile police office in Zaporizhzhia, a modern, multifunctional space created for rapid response to security challenges in the frontline region.
The office has 30 workstations for law enforcement officers who fled the occupation. They are approached by people who were also forced to leave their homes in Berdiansk, Vasylivka or Melitopol. For many, this is their first opportunity to speak with the police in person: to get a consultation, process documents, or find solutions in difficult life circumstances. At the round table in the mobile office, heads of relocated communities, representatives of the non-governmental sector and volunteers often gather. They talk about pressing matters – the problems of displaced people.
This office was equipped with assistance from UNDP and the Government of Germany: furniture and essential items for the comfort of staff and visitors – from air conditioners to water coolers – were purchased. The space also accomodates the needs of people with disabilities.
Oleh Azarenko, deputy head of the logistics and material support department of Zaporizhzhia Oblast Police, explains that the office does more than just receive citizens. It constantly hosts theoretical classes and practical training sessions on community security, including mine safety, for both adults and children. Events are also organized for veterans. Explosives experts, paramedics and dog handlers conduct sessions for the mobile office personnel, ensuring that police officers continuously strengthen critically important skills.
Despite constant air-raid alerts and the proximity of the front, the Free Legal Aid Centre 1 in Zaporizhzhia also opens its doors every day. This is where Kristina Novikova, the bureau’s chief lawyer, works. She meets visitors personally, conducts in-person appointments, and handles dozens of human stories.
“Most of our clients now are displaced people from Zaporizhzhia Oblast. We are also approached by people who have fled from Donetsk Oblast, as well as low-income individuals, older adults and people with disabilities. We very often deal with cases of domestic violence,” Kristina said.
While before February 2022 the centre’s work was dominated by standard civil matters, it now includes cases born of the war: military divorces, disputes over destroyed or lost property, inheritance in occupied territories, and social benefits under martial law.
In 2025 alone, over 56,000 people sought help from the free legal aid system in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
“Antiquated equipment was constantly breaking down. This meant delays, risk of data loss, and missing procedural deadlines. Now people don’t just entrust us with their documents, we are their hope,” Kristina explained. With UNDP and EU assistance, the bureau received laptops, printers, scanners and multifunctional devices. The new equipment allows them to work even during blackouts.
“It is mentally taxing. Our clients are exhausted, and so are we. But we hold on, as we realize we are very much needed right now,” Kristina shared.
This responsibility keeps her in Zaporizhzhia.
Child safety
In schools, nurseries and even on the street, everywhere children go every day, the city’s juvenile police talk about safety. This is how the “Grow Up Safely!” initiative works. It was launched with the help of UNDP and the EU, to create an environment for children in which they are not only aware of risks but also understand how to act in dangerous situations.
The project was designed to prevent the threats that children and teenagers encounter most often. These include injuries during free time and leisure, household accidents, traffic collisions, bullying and cyberbullying. A separate component addresses internet safety and prevention of online crime. Law enforcement officers have already conducted nearly 30 preventive events, reaching 660 children through meetings, talks, information campaigns and street actions.
“Juvenile police officers explain the rules of safe behaviour to children through life examples, dialogues, games, situation modelling and practical exercises,” said Maryna Dzhehlava, senior inspector for special assignments at the juvenile prevention department of the Main Office of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast Police.
Another Zaporizhzhia initiative supported by UNDP in cooperation with the Government of Denmark is the opening and equipping of two ‘green rooms’ at the Zaporizhzhia District Police Department. These spaces have an important mission: to return a sense of safety to children who find themselves in a police station.
For children and teenagers who have witnessed or been victims of crimes, interrogation can be re-traumatizing. However, if spoken to in the format of a game or a trusting conversation, this can be avoided. One room is being for conversations; the other is used for observation. Recording conversations allows children’s testimony to be preserved the first time, avoiding a return to painful topics.
Another important project for Zaporizhzhia’s children is the Safety Class. In a room divided into thematic zones, schoolchildren and nursery children learn from rescuers about fire safety rules, first aid, and how to behave during air raid alerts and in various dangerous situations. Children also hear advice on road safety or how to counter bullying.
In the Safety Class, risks are discussed in a way that does not frighten the child but helps them memorize important information. Cartoons featuring Patron the Dog and other video materials support this learning. Older children are engaged through conversation, movement and play. The premises were also equipped with assistance from UNDP and the Government of Denmark.
Frontline realities have robbed children of carefree school days spent patiently at desks and noisy games during breaks. For those schoolchildren who have been studying remotely for four years, a session in the Safety Class is often their first chance to see their classmates in person.
“Initially, small visitors behave stiffly and keep their distance, but they leave the class with new friends, already bolder and more open. Sometimes children tell their own stories: about a pot left on the stove, dangerous games, or a risk that seemed like a trifle. We carefully analyse these stories, work through the mistakes, and review the action algorithms for such cases,” explained Anna Popsui, an inspector of the civil protection and preventive activities department at the main office of Zaporizhzhia Oblast State Emergency Service.
Each month, 10-12 classes are held in this space for groups of 18-20 children. At the end, students sometimes receive a treat: a visit to a fire and rescue station to see specialist vehicles and equipment up close and talk to rescuers.
Comfort and dignity
Patients requiring palliative care at Zaporizhzhia City Hospital 4 now feel more comfortable during transportation. New specialized vehicles received here through UNDP and the EU are equipped with lifts, oxygen concentrators and anti-decubitus mattresses, allowing patients to be transported in a horizontal position, thereby reducing health risks.
According to doctors, most palliative patients have limited mobility. It is important not only to bring them to hospital but also to ensure a stable state, comfort and support, explained Anna Dub, Director of Zaporizhzhia City Council’s Department of Health and Medical Support.
Now, therapists, surgeons, oncologists and anaesthetists can go directly to the homes of at least 50 patients a month. There, they not only provide help but also train relatives on how to care for the sick, reducing the burden on inpatient departments. Nearly 150 people have already taken advantage of this opportunity.
UNDP and the EU are also facilitating the work of social workers in Zaporizhzhia: in May 2025, an Educational and Training Centre for Social Work was opened in the city.
Within its walls, two-week courses are held for candidates planning to adopt a child, become guardians, or create a foster family. In addition to preparing future parents, the centre serves as an educational and methodological base for social work specialists from across the region. Here, they learn to provide social services that meet state standards, work with vulnerable groups, and respond to wartime challenges. Nearly 60 percent of the courses are organized by the centre itself, while 40 percent are run by NGOs.
The Educational and Training Centre is a space for recovery and professional growth. It is equipped for modern training: mobile halls, educational technology and inclusive solutions.
“Social workers now have access to modern technologies; up-to-date training materials and a space that genuinely motivates them. When many earn minimum wage and work with extremely difficult life stories, having a dedicated place for training and recovery becomes essential. Supporting staff has emerged as an equally important part of our work,” explained Oksana Ponikarova, Director of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast Centre for Social Services.
Between its opening and January 2026, the Centre has hosted 87 events, reaching more than 2,000 participants. Every six months, training on preventing professional burnout is held here – essential when those who help others during the war often live in a state of stress and exhaustion themselves.
***
Building stable partnerships with international organizations is one of the ways for Zaporizhzhia to hold on in an extremely difficult situation, and – more importantly – to find solutions for recovery.
This Ukrainian city, just 20 kilometres from the front, is finding them.
This material was prepared as part of the flagship “EU4Recovery – Empowering Communities in Ukraine” partnership between UNDP and the EU.
Photo credit: Dmytro Smoliienko / Reporters / UNDP in Ukraine
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