By Kate Bickford | Director
The conflict in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, caused fuel supply chain disruptions across the country. Widespread damage to civilian infrastructure in eastern regions affected water and electricity supply – leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in conflict zones without access to basic necessities – and access to fuel became a matter of increasing concern for humanitarian organizations working on the ground.
Fuel Relief Fund’s founder and CEO, Ted Honcharik, traveled to Krakow and onwards to the capital city of Kyiv in late April, 2022 to begin a three-month project to facilitate fuel access for humanitarian aid agencies operating near the front lines. In Kyiv, we established a base of operations for the mission and attended meetings with local officials and private sector executives to coordinate the purchase, storage, and transportation of fuel for our humanitarian partners.
Based on Ted’s reports from the field, petrol was unavailable at many retail stations, and diesel, where available, was heavily rationed. The lack of fuel proved to be a significant barrier to program implementation – even for large NGOs, including International Medical Corps, Médecins Sans Frontières, UNICEF, and World Central Kitchen. Fuel needs were greatest in the country’s eastern areas, where fuel shortages impacted the operational capacity of humanitarian organizations that rely on light and heavy vehicle fleets to deliver critical aid.
Together with our partners at Help.NGO, FRF established an ad hoc network to ensure emergency fuel provision for the humanitarian sector. Organizations of all sizes - from large INGOs to local volunteer-run ambulance services – reached out to us for assistance. In total, FRF distributed over 50,000 liters of free fuel to 30 different aid organizations operating in Ukraine.
FRF also worked with the World Food Programme and the United Nations Global Logistics Cluster to develop large-scale solutions to support partners within the wider humanitarian community, and facilitated the prepositioning of fuel for emergency evacuations.
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