 Welcome everyone to this issue briefing on humanitarian response in Ukraine. Welcome to those in the room and to those of you online. My name is Heba Ali. I'm the CEO of the New Humanitarian, which is a news organization that reports about conflicts and disasters around the world. And we have been covering the conflict in Ukraine since 2014, actually long before Russia's invasion. Of course, we saw the devastating effects even back then, but they have certainly escalated since we are seeing millions of people displaced, food production around the world affected, huge damage to civilian infrastructure, and as many of you know, the list goes on. So today we're going to look at how particularly Ukrainians are responding to the humanitarian crisis and where we go from here, how the needs have evolved and what the longer term plan looks like. A reminder for those of you who are tweeting on your social channels that you can use the hashtag WEF22. So we have three Ukrainians with us here today. I can tell you that they traveled through quite a journey to get here, 14-hour train to Warsaw, plane to Zurich, 19-hour train, there you go. But they felt it was, as you told me yesterday, important to keep a spotlight on Ukraine in the midst of what you feel is already dwindling attention. We have two members of parliament. So right next to me is Yevhania Kravchuk, who is the deputy head of the Servant of the People Party, the President's Party in Parliament. And next, well, on the far end, also from the Servant of the People Party, Rukh Salana Pidlasa, who is the deputy chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Economic Development. And in the middle, we've got Fedor Serdyuk, who quit university to join the Red Cross rescue team after the Ukrainian Revolution. He then went on to found a company that provides health and safety consulting for businesses, and he's now ended up as basically everyone as part of the civilian humanitarian response. So I want to start with you, Rukh Salana. You're an MP, as I said, focused on economic development. How did you end up managing a humanitarian hub in the west of Ukraine? I think that my story is very similar to the story of millions of Ukrainians who, one day on the 24th of February, we woke up to the bombing of our native cities to the places we lived. I woke up at 4 a.m. I went to the parliament to vote for the introduction of the war time. And then, well, we didn't know what to do, and the legislation didn't seem to be in the focus back in the time, and many people evacuated to the west on the first days of the war. And we realized that being in the west is an excellent opportunity to enhance the volunteer organizations that started working from the very first day. They started working on bringing humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and I saw the opportunity to help them, because initially many people in Europe were reluctant to... They wanted very much to help, but they didn't know how to help. And when the member of parliament steps in and says that, I know these people, they're trustworthy organization, it helps to build this connection, to build the trust, and to bring more aid to Ukraine. That's why we started this hub, and we continue working with it today. But I want to emphasize that it's one of the thousands of similar initiatives in Ukraine, and grassroots movement is enormous now. And it's not only government-to-government action. It is mainly not government-to-government action. It is NGO sector working on bringing aid to Ukraine. It is municipal efforts. And also that many members of the parliament and deputies of different levels are working on that today. Great, thank you. And I'll try to come back to you later to better understand how the International Community can kind of tap into that volunteer effort. But I want to turn first to Yevhania. Can you give us a bit of a sense of how the humanitarian needs have evolved in the country since the beginning of the crisis to now? I guess across a number of categories you've got displaced people that are in areas that are not occupied. You've got areas that have been recently liberated. You've got people who are still under Russian occupation. So across that range, where are you seeing the most urgent needs? Thank you so much. At the very beginning, I will give you some numbers to understand that I don't think there is a family in Ukraine that was not affected by this war. And Rukhsalana just said that there are hundreds, thousands of similar cases, what she did. One-fifth of all of the population of Ukraine became volunteers of some sort. Bringing stuff, finding people who are in need. So it's truly a national war. It's not like military is fighting and everyone is watching. Everyone in Ukraine does something to bring the victory closer. Now we have 12 million people that are displaced, 5 million outside of the country. We do not call them refugees because refugees, they just sort of, you know, giving their passport, they say, I'm not coming to my motherland. They are externally displaced people, just people seeking asylum and want to come back. Also have 7 million of internally displaced people that went from south, from central churches like from Kyiv at the very beginning to the west and to other, you know, safe places in central Ukraine. So I would cover it to like three stages of humanitarian needs and crisis. First of all, the churches that are under control of Ukrainian government. By the way, we have fully operational government, parliament, local councils. And that's very important as it differs Ukraine of many, many wars and conflicts throughout years. So in these places you have like these additional 7 million people that will need to find a place to leave, a hospital to go, to, you know, school online, to join school online. But that's, you know, the very modest stage of humanitarian needs. And then you have the fully, the liberated, recently liberated cities. I mean, you've seen the pictures of Bucha, of Borodianka, of this Kyiv region, of small cities, small villages in Kharkiv region that was liberated. You know, they are ruined. No electricity, no gas. I mean, people stayed in basements without food, water for weeks, without electricity, but possibility to call the relatives saying that, you know, I'm alive. And, you know, first what you need, of course, bringing food, hygiene, medicine, and putting, you know, electricity, gas back. And then you have these occupied territories. For example, Kherson region is now freshly occupied. And that's not a humanitarian crisis. That's a humanitarian hell. Russians are not letting any help to these regions. People want to leave these regions. They would stand in the field for five days in their cars. And Russians are not letting them out. That's, you know, in Kherson region. Luhans Oblast, Donetsk Oblast is being erased from the face of the earth. It's literally hell over there. And what is, you know, my message here. The closer is Russia, the worse is humanitarian situation. You know, it's as easy as that. We need to kick out Russians from our country. What is it that can be done in those areas that are, while the Russians are still there, in those areas that are occupied? You know, when I'm being asked what is the, you know, best humanitarian aid for Ukraine, I'm sorry to say, but I say it's weapons. It's heavy weapons to kick Russians out because you can't bring a relief to these people that are occupied territories. I mean, they're being tortured, children being raped. I mean, we have cases of two years old kids raped in Kharkiv region. You know, the only way to give relief to these people is to liberate land and to kick out occupiers from this territory. Fedor, you're providing a different kind of aid. You've trained the army, police officers, medics, volunteers to do first aid and emergency response mostly on your own dime. About 4,000 people have been trained since this latest invasion, but 50,000 since 2014. What are you seeing on the ground? What kind of challenges are you facing? The things we see now in Ukraine is an enormous storm for medical system, especially for the trauma system because we have many casualties. First of all, the military and defense forces, but also a huge number of civilian casualties. As Russia uses the weapons, which are not precise, they use artillery. Mainly, more than 70% of the casualties have the shrapnel wounds, so not bullets. And you are not able to control where your rockets are flying. So they cover, they shell actually the huge areas. You receive one time a lot of casualties at the same time, so the response of the first responder is critical because 70% or more of the preventable fatalities. People who could be saved, they die from severe bleeding, and bleeding kills a person very fast in three to five minutes, sometimes ten. Our task is to have, as we do not know, where Russia will strike. They can strike a market, they can strike a street, they can strike a military base. Also, they sometimes pick up military targets eventually. Why not? So they mainly attack civilians, but sometimes military. Our goal is to have people ready to stop the bleeding and to apply first aid, open the airways, close the pneumothorax wounds on the chest in three to five minutes. So we need a lot of first responders. We need a lot of equipment everywhere where Russia can strike. So almost everywhere through our line of the war zone. So our goal now, and what problems do we experience, we see that we're running out of equipment because every medic or every first responder needs to have first aid kit for himself and for many casualties because there are artillery strikes and there are like a mass casualty event. And though we have to have a load to recharge because every time medic runs out of equipment, he needs more equipment. So basically what we need is a first aid equipment for medics and first responders and for soldiers and even for civilians. And it is a question of time when the hospitals will run out of equipment more advanced. We receive enormous support in terms of medicine. We have a lot of different medical equipment coming from western countries and some other countries. We appreciate it. But the warfare is irregular, so we do not know where the next strike would be placed and the logistics failed. So Russia bombs the roads and bridges. So we are not able to move this equipment really fast as fast as we need. So we really need a lot of equipment to be prepared. We talked earlier about the volunteer response. That's been a huge part of the effort in Ukraine. And we are hearing in our reporting about trauma, about burnout among the volunteers. We heard from one international peace building organization that local volunteer coordinators were working, you know, 50 hours a week to manage these masses of volunteers. You've been doing this now for three months, Federer. How long can you last? Is this sustainable? Well, I do not want to say naive, but we will last until our victory because we have no other chance. I mean, in the ideal circumstances, we'll have way different system that we have now and way different answers that I give you now. And it is definitely not okay that my people who are teaching thousands of people risking their lives and like working from early morning to late of night, they work as volunteers. But it is a challenge now to secure resources enough to continue operation. And we have the managerial capabilities to do so and we have the corporate social responsibility and we have international donors. So I believe it is a question of time when we'll secure enough resources. So what I believe in that we are now on transfer as we understand that the war will not end in the nearest time. It will continue until our victory. And I'm sure of it again. We'll operate and we'll find resources and reinvent the model to make it more sustainable. But what I want to mention also that the western world and our partners from the civilized world from many countries including like east and thousands of whatever, they have now to make their decision either to send us tourniquets forever or to send us weapons now because what my health and safety experience shows that prevention is always better than management. If you prevent the injury, you do not have to deal with it. And now medical aid, not the best doctor if you would send us the best Switzerland doctor or the professor will save as much lives than the peace agreement which only would be possible when Russia will be defeated. And I wanted to show you this helmet. It's a helmet from the volunteer who mobilized to fight Russia. So he wasn't about to fight Russia actually because I don't believe he cared. He was about to protect his house. Whenever we're about to attack any country, we're fighting on our ground. It's important to understand. So we can have the best helmet and the best medicine and the best doctors. We train them really well now, but it will never save lives as effective as the peace agreement. And the peace agreement without a destruction on the world order, rule-based world order again is possible only with the defeat of the aggressor, not with like relaxing the aggressor, not with like saving, protecting the face of the aggressor, but with defeat. That's why I'm as a person who really loves peace, who enjoys my peaceful life. I'm listed to Forbes Europe. I'm listed to Ukraine. I really love my life. So I don't want to continue to understand my motivation. I'm telling you now that that's the only option. And I'm sorry to tell that, but that's the only truth. And I want you to see this from the other side, right? So this is penetrated. I mean, you will never have enough of the protection, but the full prevention of the war. We failed to prevent it, but we still have the war every day. So it's never too late, right? But every day we're running out of people, of equipment, of everything. So make the decision. We're sending tourniquets forever. We're sending weapons now. I just wanted to jump in and support what Ferris said, because when we are speaking in our panels about humanitarian crisis, this humanitarian crisis was not caused by a flood, by a tornado, by, I don't know, something natural. It was caused by a country called Russia with dictator called Putin, who brought troops into our country. We're a peaceful nation. We don't need an inch of Russian soil. But if someone comes to our land, we will fight. We will fight until our victory. And the only way to stop these atrocities, to help the people who are wounded, who are hungry, who can't, you know, kids. I mean, I have eight years old kid. During the night, she has to go to the basement because we have air alerts. And at nine in the morning, she turns on her laptop and go to online schooling. That's, you know, the life. But she's, you know, she's relatively safe. And today an 11 years old girl from Donbass region died because of Russian bombs and shelling. And she's the 233rd child that was killed by Russians in this war. And we have to stop it and to kick out the aggressor from our country. I will say, as someone who watches the humanitarian response system very closely, it's very rare to hear when you ask someone what are the humanitarian needs for them to respond, send us weapons. So this is a very different kind of dynamic. Then we're used to hearing with aid agencies that insist on neutrality and not being part of the conflict and not taking sides. But I think actually one that the international community often forgets is at play. Rukh Solan, I just want to come back to you on some of the wider implications of this crisis. Of course, it's been devastating for Ukraine, but it also has global implications in terms of food production and wheat supply. What do you think needs to happen in order to avert that kind of a global food crisis? Well, I will not be original. It all comes to weapons. But there are other ways, of course. We do talk in the world and it's like the global topic today, the food security and that the economist was out last week with the cover that the world is on the fringe of mass hunger because of Russia attacking Ukraine because Ukraine is the world's largest producer of grains and food and the countries in Africa and Asia are very dependent on Ukraine in terms of export and what Russia is doing right now. They are causing humanitarian crisis not only in Ukraine but also in the world and they are doing that deliberately. Russia wants the world to suffer from hunger, from poverty and from every possible thing, every worst thing that you could imagine. And they are doing this mainly by blocking Ukrainian seaports right now. The harvest that Ukraine collected last year, it is blocked in the ports of Odessa, it is blocked in Burdansk, it is blocked in Ilychowsk and other, which is Chornomorsk now, and other places, even in the places that are not occupied right now by Russian forces. The Russian warships are on the rate in front of these cities and they are not allowing any commercial ships to go to these ports to collect the harvest, to collect the grains and bring it back and bring it to the other places. There are different, there are a couple of ways how the world could respond. We were talking about a lot with different trade organizations and with UN as well about the ocean, well the kind of operation that was used in the Gulf of Odin, the Ocean Shield operation when the NATO convoys were going with commercial ships to the ports to load them. It is one possibility but also the another possibility is always providing heavy weapons and anti-ship missiles for Ukraine so that Ukraine could protect its own ports itself. It could go hand in hand together, it could be done separately, but it is important to understand that we must do something right now because the situation is decreasing, it is getting more and more severe. Apart from the seaports we also have a huge problem with the fuels because Russia is deliberately bombing the oil refineries in Ukraine, destroying them so that Ukrainian farmers could not sow the grains this season so that there will be no harvest at all next season if they don't do that. And that would be the ideal situation for Russia because everyone in the world would be forced to buy Russian grain. Well if the world wants to buy Russian grain I'm sure they don't we have to respond right now and we don't have that much time now. We're speaking, well seaports is one thing but we're also speaking about humanitarian aid in terms of fuel because while the Ukrainian market was very much dependent on Russia and Belarus in terms of importing the diesel and petroleum while the commercial market is shifting towards shipments from Europe we have to work on the shipments from also public reserves from the West, from the European countries and from the US because the situation is quite urgent and we don't have time to wait while the market will adjust on itself. You talked about fuel, I'm going to put aside the weapons for a minute coming back to the actual needs, I mean what we often see in crises is that people send all kinds of stuff and in this crisis that's not an exception, so like 10,000 pairs of women's leggings endless boxes of pasta without fuel to cook them, I've heard even of a truck full of breaches so what is your message as a government in terms of how you'd like the international community to coordinate with you when they do want to be helpful? First of all I'd like to repeat my message that we do have full operational government and parliament and local councils, so it's not like the situation that I don't know United Nations helicopter is just sort of bringing packs of food and putting them on the ground we do have the system of bringing the aid into the different regions and the stocks and hubs from which this help goes to the communities that need the most of course at the very beginning of this full scale invasion we had a lot of trucks with food and you know this water supplies but now the most urgent need is medicine, is money we need financial aid because we spent so much money on the war that I mean we need to finance the social needs, we have these displaced people inside of the country they lost their jobs they need to have some sort of income our GDP has dropped for 30% because our factories are bombed part of the territory is occupied as Rok Solana said the fuel the diesel and petroleum because we had to change the whole logistics of bringing these to Ukraine and of course you know there is a shortage of petroleum and diesel right now and for example Poland can mix the number but pretty much big amount of petroleum from their reserves as a country and also I think that as I said I mean I can call any ministry or any you know like government, governor from the regions if you want to I don't know rebuild a school or rebuild a museum or try to save the cultural heritage or help the library you can ask that and we'll help you to do the direct help to you know to concrete region to concrete if you have I don't know you want to help kids we have the organizations, we have the Ministry of Social Affairs we will bring your help to the person that is on the ground enjoys working on the ground and you know delivering these help directly I think what we've heard certainly from the humanitarian community is if there was ever a crisis in which all of the pledges to localize aid delivery could become reality it is this one because you have a functioning government because you have some new resources in place and if aid can't be localized in Ukraine then when will it ever happen so there's a call to that Fedor did you want to jump in? Yeah I wanted to add something I believe you're expecting for some you know suggestion for those millions of people all over the world who are willing to help and we really have amazing support now I believe in the power of the horizontal surf organization the decentralization that's what really leads the world to success in my humble opinion in the last years and our system is antifragile it proved itself to be antifragile because it's extremely decentralized as Eugenia mentioned before like 20% of our citizens who stayed in the country are now volunteers Sorry to interrupt, how does the international community tap into that network? There are some prominent organizations one of them developed by the Ukrainian global shapers community called SON, they support Ukraine now but generally there are people from different countries on the ground in the regions different I meet them in Odessa, in Mikolayev and very close to war zone surprisingly close to war zone they have actually very brave and these people they pick up the leaders from the small organizations and then support them and they have amazing result it might not look that sustainable that we expected to be but they're extremely efficient because these people know the situation on the ground and we started our operations in Odessa for instance training military reserve there to move them back to combat and training the responders who responded the missile strikes so then we had to move to Mikolayev and I traveled there found a house I go by this house like starting doing my operation met some people and then I like in three days understood all the rock stars of Mikolayev Red Cross volunteers rescue volunteers international organizations so what my suggestion is if it goes direct to support small volunteer organizations on the ground especially Ukrainian because these people are they have amazing motivation and thanks to World Economic Forum and international community we now have this organization having its voice on international media so if you are reading Financial Times or Bloomberg or something else about organization of three like 30 people 300 people not the huge one just Google them support them and you will really you will have a lot of appreciation from them you'll have amazing results from them and you will contribute I'm not having anything against big organizations but this irregular warfare means that smaller sometimes is better and the flexible is better for I'm sure that the flexibility is the crucial for efficient response on humanitarian especially humanitarian not wartime issues now Rukselina last thoughts I think I want to second what Fedor said if you're if you are donating personally donate locally donate to small organizations because they are the most efficient and often the most reliable and less money will go to the bureaucracy of the big organizations but I also would like to appeal to the governments of an intergovernmental institution and international organizations about our needs very quickly we need fuel we need weapons that's we already established but also we need fuel three hundred three thousand three yeah three hundred thousand tons per month only for diesel we need ambulances we need fire trucks we need temporary housing facilities because Russia destroyed thirty eight million square kilometers of residential buildings and we need the mining facilities for newly liberated towns and regions thank you I just want to end with you Kenya if you could give us very briefly thoughts on the longer term we've talked a lot about immediate needs longer term what are you thinking in terms of what needs to happen as we all said Victor of Ukraine needs to happen and then the sustainable sustainable peace cannot be without justice we need to bring all of these you know soldiers and their command and up to to political command to the responsibility this evil cannot go unpunished because it will be repeating in other corners of the world and I'm pretty sure that we will end up creating a special tribunal as it was in Nuremberg after the Second World War because already we have the cases of thirteen thousand or four crimes committed in Ukraine and you know if we do not end this war by winning this number will grow and grow and grow and the price tag for the lost infrastructure will grow as well and of course we'll need the new Marshall plan for Ukraine to rebuild the country to establish economy and Ukraine I'm sure needs to be a part of European Union a full member of European Union because we chose these European values were dying for them and we want to be inside of the Union and be part of European family another example of how a humanitarian response can't really be separated from the wider political and military context so thank you very much for your attention thank you to the three of you for making a long journey and giving your insights on what's really happening inside the country and there will be a special address by the Ukrainian president at eleven fifteen I believe today so you can stay tuned for that as well thanks very much