The end of summer 2025 brought a new escalation of hostilities in eastern and southern Ukraine. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, fighting remained intense throughout August and September, and its impact on the civilian population increased ahead of the cold season.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine recorded 208 deaths and 827 injuries in August, and 214 deaths and 916 injuries in September. The number of civilian casualties since the beginning of the year has increased by 31% compared to the same period in 2024. About 70% of the victims are in frontline areas, where shelling, rocket and drone attacks continue.
ukr-situation-snapshot-aug-sep-2025Civilians under attack
Civilian casualties were recorded in at least fifteen regions in August and sixteen in September. For the first time since 2022, strikes have been confirmed in Zakarpattia, demonstrating the expansion of the geography of violence.
Continuous attacks on energy and gas facilities increase the risks to the population. Due to the destruction of infrastructure, millions of Ukrainians are left without stable access to heating, water and electricity.
The healthcare system is operating at full capacity. Shelling often disrupts the work of hospitals, damages ambulances and disrupts the supply chain for medicines. Medical professionals work in dangerous conditions, with a shortage of equipment and under constant threat of shelling.
Education is also under attack: schools are destroyed or without shelters, making face-to-face learning impossible. Millions of children are losing stable access to education.
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Evacuations and internal displacement
The intensification of shelling in the Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions led to a wave of evacuations. According to data from the camp coordination cluster, from January to September 2025, approximately 57,000 evacuees were registered in transit centres in the Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Sumy regions.
The flow of people has decreased slightly: approximately 11,500 people arrived in August and 10,800 in September. This is due to changes in the front line and the complexity of evacuation routes.
Most of the new arrivals are elderly people, persons with disabilities, and families with children. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that by the end of September, there were approximately 3.7 million internally displaced persons remaining in Ukraine.
Ninety-three per cent of people who recently left their homes reported problems with access to food, housing, and medicine. Years of displacement have depleted savings, leaving IDPs more vulnerable to shortages of basic resources. With winter approaching, reduced assistance and ongoing shelling create a new wave of risks for vulnerable families.
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Blows to the energy sector
The last weeks of summer were accompanied by a sharp increase in attacks on the energy system. In August, there were nine such strikes, and in September, there were already thirty-one.
On 27 August, a large-scale drone attack damaged energy and gas infrastructure in six regions: Poltava, Sumy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, and Kyiv. More than 100,000 households were left without electricity.
In the Sumy region, hospitals are forced to run on generators to maintain critical services. On 8 September, a strike on a thermal power plant in the Kyiv region left more than 8,000 facilities without power for two days. New attacks on 25 September in the Chernihiv region left about 70,000 residents without electricity, including 43,000 in Nizhyn.
Damage to power grids disrupted preparations for the heating season and hampered the work of hospitals and water supply. The authorities were forced to introduce power cut schedules from the beginning of October, which is particularly noticeable for residents of frontline regions.
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Preparing for winter
With the onset of cold weather, humanitarian organisations have stepped up their assistance to the population. The UN and its partners continue to provide thermal insulation materials, fuel, and construction kits for repairs in collective centres and homes of people who have lost their homes.
Local communities are being helped to maintain central heating systems, provide medical care for hypothermia and respiratory diseases, and provide veterinary support to farmers to preserve livestock.
The most at risk are older people, children and people with disabilities, who have already suffered from the loss of their homes and access to medical services. In regions bordering the front line, the threat to them is exacerbated by damaged infrastructure and complex logistics for delivering aid.
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