Morning news reports detailing the number of civilians killed and injured as a result of Russia’s war against Ukraine have become a daily occurrence. From the start of the full-scale invasion through August 10, 2026, 18,438 civilian deaths have been officially recorded in Ukraine, including 595 in the Chernihiv region, while the number of wounded stands at 50,045, including 1,491 in the region, according to the press services of the Office of the Prosecutor General and the regional prosecutor’s office.
Behind all these numbers are real people. Is there a universal one-time compensation payment for the injury or the death of a civilian as a result of hostilities? How does the government provide assistance to those civilians who are wounded as a result of Russian attacks? Can they receive it, and what obstacles do they face?
A leg injury and a shrapnel fragment in her back
Olga Hobrenyak, a 34-year-old woman from Chernihiv will forever remember two days of her life, March 16 and 17, 2022. At that time, the city of Chernihiv had no electricity, no heat, no water, nor communication. People had to turn to volunteers, neighbors, and acquaintances for the essentials needed to survive. Wherever supplies were delivered, lines formed.
On the morning of March 16, 2022, Olga's father, Andriy Melashchenko, went to buy groceries on what used to be Dotsenko Street, now Sobornosti Street. That day, Russian troops opened fire on a line of people waiting for bread: 20 people were killed, including Olga’s father, and 28 were wounded. Later, law enforcement officials announced that three commanders of Russian military units were under suspicion. As of September 15, 2026, according to the Chernihiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office, the case is ongoing.
“I was standing near the ‘Silpo’ store at the Central Department Store. A truck pulled up – they were selling cheese and meat. I got in line to buy something. My mom called and told me that my dad had been caught in the shelling. I left the line and started looking for him. I tried calling hospitals, but the connection was poor. Later, through neighbors and acquaintances, we found out that he had been taken to the second city hospital and had died in the operating room. But I didn’t find out about this until after my own surgery, a month later in Cherkasy,” Olga recalls.
On the morning of March 17, Olga herself was injured. She had gone to charge her cell phone at the “Children’s World” shopping center, but because a line had quickly formed there, she decided to head home, fearing an attack. “It was around 10 a.m. The shelling began. I was just passing by the women’s clinic on Pirogov Street. The Russians were firing from multiple rocket launchers, and a lot of shells were coming in. At first, I sat down by the steps, and then a young man who was sitting by the entrance to the women’s clinic said, ‘Come up here.’ As soon as I started climbing up, these small fragments flying out of the shell went completely through my leg, into my upper thigh. That young man helped me and carried me to the basement of the five-story building because the shelling was still going on. It was really dangerous out there.”
When the shelling ended, an ambulance took Olga to the Chernihiv Regional Hospital. As she recalls, the doctors checked to see if she had any feeling in her leg. They were supposed to do an X-ray and surgery right away, but there was no electricity, so they couldn’t do anything at that time. “So I didn’t have a diagnosis. They just cleaned the wound, put a splint on it, and put me in a ward. I laid there, probably for about four days, without surgery. Various doctors came by. One of them discovered that I also had a shrapnel fragment in my back. Again, there were no X-rays, so no one could do anything. But there was talk that it needed to be removed before it “moved” further. It’s still there now, a small one, two by two millimeters.”
Olga left Chernihiv on March 22, 2022, and underwent surgery in Cherkasy. The doctors wanted to remove the shrapnel from her back as well, but it had already “gone too far”, so now it will remain inside her forever.
Since the attack and the surgery, Olga’s right leg is two centimeters shorter than her left, and she must undergo constant rehabilitation with a therapist because of the pain she experiences. She has not been granted disability status, so she pays for all her treatments out of her own pocket. She says she has not received any assistance from the government.
“My father suffered for a month and died”
Yaroslav Malofeyenko, too, will remember the morning of April 17, 2026, for the rest of his life. That night, the city of Chernihiv came under a massive attack by Russian drones. The attack continued into the morning, just as he and his 69-year-old father, Volodymyr Malofeyenko, were getting ready for work. They lived across the street from each other on Partizanska Street.
That day, Yaroslav received a phone call from his mother. “She said, ‘Hurry over, your father’s been killed.’ I ran over. He was lying on the ground, he had a wound in his neck, like a gunshot or shrapnel. I didn’t realize which it was at the time. I immediately called the police and an ambulance.”
At first, they took him to the second city hospital, and then to the regional hospital. “It took a very long time to figure out whether there was anything inside him or not. Then they took him to neurosurgery. The surgery was successful, as the doctors said, but no one gave any guarantees.”
According to Yaroslav, the medications were very expensive. One IV drip cost 1,500 hryvnias (about 30 euros), and they needed 40 of them that same day. “This was necessary to stop the hematoma from forming in the spinal cord. We drove all over the city, buying one or two IV drips at a time. For two days, he seemed to be recovering, but on the third day, he stopped breathing on his own. We put him on a ventilator. With each passing day – no matter what we did, no matter what the doctors did – it just got worse and worse. My father suffered for a month. The last two weeks were very difficult for him and for us. We watched a person fade away right before our eyes. He died on May 19. He would have turned 70 in a month. He didn’t make it.”
Yaroslav also says that his family has not received any assistance from the government.
No compensation program for civilian deaths or injuries
There are many stories in Ukraine similar to those of Yaroslav and Olga. There is no provision in the law regarding compensation for civilians for any harm caused to their health – or even death – as a result of military operations. “There is no state program or funding procedure. That is, there are no payments like those provided for military personnel, who receive a specific amount and have grounds for compensation,” lawyer Roman Tytikalo told Suspilne.
For Tytikalo, the Ministry of Social Affairs should draft the necessary legislation, allocate funds in the budget, and submit a corresponding bill to the parliament. The Cabinet of Ministers could also address this issue through a resolution. “This issue is constantly raised – that it needs to be resolved – but it never gets to the point of practical implementation. The problem is that everything goes through the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Finance, and they usually mention the lack of funds. They view everything through this lens, even though the issue of justice remains unresolved,” Tytikalo said.
So far, Ukraine has only a draft proposal initiated by the Ministry of Social Affairs, Family, and Unity regarding the payment of a one-time cash benefit to the families of civilians killed as a result of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine. “We are still working on this draft because it is very difficult to establish a causal link proving that a death was directly caused by Russian aggression. The international convention states that the aggressor bears responsibility for any damages. But to implement this – to secure reparations – there is still a great deal that needs to be done,” said Valentina Kudin, director of the Department of pension provision, pension policy development, social insurance, and the elderly at Ukraine’s ministry of Social Affairs.
As for the Chernihiv region,Iryna Marchuk, director of the Department of Social Affairs at the Chernihiv City Council, recognizes that as of August 2026, the Chernihiv community does not have a support program for family members of civilians killed as a result of Russian aggression. According to her, this issue is raised periodically, but funding is the obstacle.
What are the current state obligations?
As of now, Ukraine’s obligations to civilians consist of general provisions included in healthcare packages, during treatment, and in the provision of first aid, Kudin says.
In the event of a civilian disability, “if a person becomes disabled following treatment, civilians can count on a disability pension, provided they have the required insurance history. If a person does not have the necessary insurance history, they are granted state social assistance, for which they must apply to the Pension Fund,” she says.
In the event of a civilian death, Ukraine has a law on burial and funeral services that outlines the stages of support for funeral services, she adds. Funeral expenses can be paid by local authorities or the family of the deceased receives 8,000 hryvnias (155 euros), or two or three times the amount of the deceased's pension.
In the event of a civilian injury as a result of military hostilities, government programs offer sick leave benefits, support packages through the National Health Service of Ukraine, provided during treatment, and a rehabilitation program from the Social Protection Fund for People with Disabilities.
For Kudin, it is incorrect to compare the social protection of military personnel with that of civilians. “We are not on the same level as the military. They clearly face greater risks,” she says.
Civilians injured at critical infrastructure sites
The Russian Federation’s army began attacks on critical infrastructure in the fall of 2022. On October 10, 2022, Russia launched its first massive missile strike against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and cities. In the Chernihiv region, attacks targeting critical infrastructure became systematic in the fall of 2025.
On October 10, 2025, two power workers, 47-year-old Anatoliy Savchenko and 46-year-old Ruslan Deineha, were killed in the region. Subsequently, Ukraine did improve the system for providing one-time financial assistance to victims at critical infrastructure facilities. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted the corresponding decision in June 2026.
According to the Ministry of Social Affairs’s website, the amount of the one-time benefit is one million hryvnias (19,500 euros) in the event of death, and 200,000 to 800,000 hryvnias (3,900 to 15,500 euros) for disabilities.
In the event of an employee’s injury on the job, including as a result of military operations, the Pension Fund of Ukraine pays for sick leave with 100% of the average salary, a one-time benefit, depending on the percentage of loss of working capacity, with a maximum amount of 60,529 hryvnias (1,200 euros), as well as a monthly compensation for lost earnings, with a minimum of 3,328 hryvnias (65 euros) and maximum of 34,588 hryvnias (670 euros).
In the event of an employee’s death, their family receives a lump-sum benefit of 345,880 hryvnias (6,700 euros), along with a lump-sum benefit of 69,176 hryvnias (1350 euros) for each dependent, as well as a monthly payment for the loss of a breadwinner, calculated based on the deceased’s earnings and distributed among dependents.
In addition, victims of workplace accidents, including those resulting from military operations, may be provided with monthly compensation for home care services, such as specialized medical care of 8,647 hryvnias per month (170 euros), constant third-party care of 4,323 hryvnias per month (84 euros), and household assistance of 2,161 hryvnias per month (42 euros). The Pension Fund also provides funding for the cost of care supplies (sanitary and hygiene products, special nutrition, special clothing or footwear).
A separate law applies to those who work in the most hazardous conditions, such as employees of critical infrastructure facilities, civil servants, and local government officials who have suffered injuries, concussions, or disabilities while performing their duties at facilities that are most frequently subjected to shelling or may be considered by the Russian Federation’s armed forces as potential priority targets.
“Be grateful that you can walk”
For Tytikalo, civilians should receive at least some compensation for injuries due to shelling, just as the relatives of deceased civilians do, and this should become an urgent priority for the state.
Right now, Olga spends several thousand hryvnias a month to maintain her health, and when she doesn’t exercise, her body “lets her know right away” through back pain. She began seeing doctors in Chernihiv immediately after noticing that she was always putting more weight on one leg. “Even when I’m sitting, I shift most of my weight to the side I’m used to. Because for half a year, I didn’t use my right side at all. I went to see one of the orthopedic surgeons at City Hospital No. 1. He took a look, said I was doing great, that it was nothing serious, and told me to ‘be grateful that you can walk.’ Those words really stuck with me.”
In 2023, a family doctor advised Olga to undergo a medical and social examination to apply for a disability classification. “Once again, I ended up seeing this doctor. He said, ‘I don’t know what disability classification you’d qualify for. You can walk; you have a leg. That’s how people live. You’re healthy’,” she recalls him saying. "But my back still bothers me. Even now, sometimes when I sleep on my back, it’s hard for me to breathe. All of this happens because one leg is shorter. Even the slightest strain – like carrying grocery bags – puts pressure on my back.”
She later found another orthopedic surgeon who advised her to add one centimeter using orthopedic insoles in one shoe and prescribed medication. After that, she stopped seeing public doctors and began working with private physical therapists. “But that’s 1,500 hryvnias for a 40-minute session. Sessions with a physical therapist in western Ukraine, where I went for about three months, cost the same. The gym also costs money.”
How to find money to fund compensation?
Olga never received a disability classification. No one ever told her about government programs or what she could expect. Law enforcement officers came to talk to her and take a statement about how she was injured and how her father died. Olga says they were told that all this information is necessary for future reparations that Ukraine may receive from Russia. This refers to the compensation mechanism and Russia’s frozen assets around the world.
Tytikalo advises contacting the family doctor once again. “I often see cases where people apply for such disability benefits and receive them. First and foremost, all the necessary medical documents are required, which the family doctor uploads to the database. It’s possible that, in certain specific cases, a family doctor might be reluctant to submit the documents and creates various artificial obstacles, such as claiming that certain documents aren’t required or something similar. But it’s actually very simple: just scan all these documents.”
Yaroslav said that UNICEF helped his family after his father’s death. Overall, he said, his family spent about 100,000 hryvnias (about 2,000 euros) on his father’s treatment. “The local authorities allocated 1,000 hryvnias (about 20 euros). Nothing else. We asked around, looked for contacts, went everywhere, but everyone said, ‘There’s no such law; there’s nothing we can do.’”
This is an edited version of a longer article published on Suspilne. This article was made through a grant by Fondation Hirondelle / Justice Info.
