Estonian Refugee Council launches winter campaign to help Ukrainians with heating
The Estonian Refugee Council has launched its 2026 winter campaign to help vulnerable families living in frontline and hard-to-reach areas of eastern and southern Ukraine with vital heating assistance.
In Ukraine, winter is not simply a cold season – for people in especially vulnerable situations, it is a matter of survival. Throughout November and December, the Estonian Refugee Council (ERC) is collecting donations to help vulnerable families living in frontline and hard-to-reach areas of eastern and southern Ukraine make it through the winter.
In these towns and villages, people cannot rely on stable infrastructure: electricity and heating can disappear at any moment, there are often no alternatives, and homes already damaged by previous attacks lose heat rapidly.
According to Estonian Refugee Council Director Eero Janson, the current public discussions around a potential peace agreement have not improved the situation or security of people in Ukraine.
"Russian attacks continue, and as the recent strike in Ternopil showed, they can be devastating. Ukraine's energy infrastructure has been widely destroyed: around 60 percent of electricity-generation capacity has been damaged, while in the hardest-hit regions around 40 – 60 percent of heating infrastructure is not functioning at full capacity," Janson explained.
"In several oblasts, around half of the key power transmission and distribution nodes have been knocked offline or severely degraded by attacks. Power outages are frequent everywhere, and society as a whole is facing deep moral exhaustion," he added.
The ERC's support is directed primarily to areas with intensified fighting and damaged infrastructure in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. In these regions, access to essential services is severely disrupted, energy prices are extremely high, and many families are unable to keep their homes warm during the cold months.
The ERC provides both financial and in-kind assistance to help families cope with rising heating costs and ensure they have enough heating fuel for the entire winter. Supporting one household requires approximately €460 – enough to cover heating fuel or heating expenses for a five-month period.
Accordingto the ERC, a €23 donation provides heating assistance for one family for one week, while €92 is enough for one family for one month. Donating €460 enables them to provide heating assistance for one family to get through the entire winter.
More information about the ERC's 2025 winter campaign is available here.
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Editor: Michael Cole
