As snow falls on Chernihiv, a town north of Kyiv, families are finding solace in the warmth of their newly repaired homes

Winter has arrived in Chernihiv, a town in the northern part of Ukraine. Snow has fallen and temperatures have dropped below zero degrees Celsius.

Six-year-old Melaniia woke up early to find a winter wonderland outside her bedroom window – a carpet of fluffy white snow as far as the eye could see. She quickly rose, dressed in warm winter clothes and with her pink sledge under her arm, excitedly joined friends outside to make a snowman and to sledge on their street.

The group of children playing in the snow is much smaller than it was this time last year. That’s because in March and April, this normally quiet neighbourhood was shaken to its very core. For over 30 days, it was targeted by intense shelling, missiles and rockets leaving behind death, devastation and destruction. Terrified residents fled for cover in underground bunkers or quickly packed some essential belongings and fled further away in search of safety.

Melaniia’s family left their home in late February, and only returned home in the summer months, when they felt it was safe to do so.

“Melaniia’s father – my son-in-law – took his wife and children to another village further away from here on 25 February,” says 65-year-old retired factory worker and grandmother, Tamara.

Despite heavy shelling, Tamara never left the home in which she grew up.  Looking over a white fence, she points to a neighbouring house “My 85-year-old mother, Kateryna, and my brother live here. My brother has a disability, and my mother has difficulty walking. I couldn’t leave them behind”.

Staying above ground was far too dangerous as missiles and rockets rained down on their village. “I made improvised beds in our cellar where we hid during the hostilities”, says Tamara. “The cellar steps were too steep for my mother, so I put a coat down and used it as a sledge to bring her down. We stayed there for two long weeks”.

Every day the family heard loud shelling and explosions around them. The days passed slowly and with unbearable uncertainty as the cold, the dark and damp set in around them. Tamara’s mother’s leg became badly infected, and the infection started to spread to other parts of her body. “My mother became very sick, and we had no choice but to go to a local hospital amid all the shelling. It was the only way to save her life.”

At the hospital, her mother received the urgent care she so badly needed, and she has since made a full recovery.

When hostilities subsided, Tamara and her family were able to finally assess the damage to their home and to their street. Miraculously, the two homes belonging to their families remained standing but significantly damaged.

This autumn, the family was enrolled in UNHCR’ s shelter programme, through local authorities. Soon after, both houses were repaired, receiving new windows, roofs and doors, to help keep the heat in this winter.

Sitting in her warm kitchen beside a fridge adorned with colourful children’s drawings, Tamara talks about what the repairs mean for her: “Having older people and people with disabilities in our family, this would be very difficult to do these repairs on our own.”

Next door, her mother, who also survived WWII, sits down to a dinner in her warm kitchen.

Despite unimaginable hardship and suffering, this family is slowly healing from the pain of loss and destruction. Tamara keeps herself busy caring for her grandchildren and reading late in the evening.

Against all odds, she finds some solace in their experience. “I feel that we’re not left alone to deal with our tragedy. It gives me strength and hope in humanity,” she says, smiling wistfully.

UNHCR Representative Karolina Lindholm Billing met with Tamara and little Melaniia in Chernihiv city together with UNHCR’s longstanding Nordic partners, including the Ambassadors of Denmark and Sweden to Ukraine, and the Charge d’Affairs of the Embassy of Finland.

“More than 150,000 people fled Chernihiv region at the beginning of the war in search of safety. And more than 9,000 houses and civilian infrastructure were destroyed. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion against Ukraine, UNHCR has assisted around 4 million of people across the country with legal advice, psychosocial support, cash and in-kind assistance, and material and works to repair damaged houses. Of course, as winter is here, our top priority is to provide assistance that helps people stay safe and warm in their homes during these bitterly cold months. UNHCR immensely grateful to our partners Denmark, Finland and Sweden, whose funding enables us to support Ukraine and its remarkable and resilient people to recover and rebuild.”

Thanks to the long-standing and reliable partnership of the Nordic countries and their flexible funding, UNHCR has been able to expand, adapt and shift priorities as the needs have changed during the course of the past 10 months to ensure that UNHCR’s programmes are always reaching the people and the areas that need support the most, at any point in time.

UNHCR works in close cooperation with the Government of Ukraine and local authorities in Chernihiv oblast to help the most vulnerable people in the oblast through shelter programmes and the provision of humanitarian aid, legal and psychosocial support.

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