Dnipro: Where Have All the Foreign Volunteers Gone?
By Matthew Parish
Wednesday 28 October 2026
Dnipro is one of the most important cities in Ukraine’s war against Russia, yet it is also one of the least understood by foreigners. It is a great industrial metropolis, a centre of logistics, medicine and military support, and a gateway to the eastern front. Throughout the full-scale Russian invasion, Dnipro has absorbed displaced people, treated wounded soldiers, received humanitarian supplies and sustained the infrastructure upon which much of Ukraine’s resistance depends. One might therefore expect to encounter a substantial international community of humanitarian organisations, foreign volunteers and charitable institutions working alongside the Ukrainian population. Yet the reality, at least as it presents itself to an independent journalist seeking to establish contacts in the city, is strikingly different.
In preparing to visit Dnipro and interview those engaged in its civil society, I encountered a curious phenomenon. Numerous foreign non-governmental organisations and volunteer initiatives purport to undertake activities in or around Dnipro, and the city features prominently in descriptions of international humanitarian operations across eastern Ukraine. Yet attempts to establish meaningful contact with foreign representatives have proved remarkably unproductive. Promising leads have evaporated, introductions have led nowhere and enquiries have elicited little meaningful engagement. By contrast, local Ukrainians have been welcoming, cooperative and interested in explaining their work. The accessible civil society of Dnipro appears, overwhelmingly, to be Ukrainian.
This observation requires some qualification. International humanitarian organisations have not disappeared from Dnipro, and it would be inaccurate to suggest otherwise. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Organization for Migration both identify Dnipro among their operational locations, while Polish Humanitarian Action was advertising for a position in its Dnipro office as recently as 22 October 2026. Yet there is an important distinction between the institutional presence of an international organisation and the existence of an identifiable, accessible foreign volunteer community. An international humanitarian organisation may operate an office staffed principally by Ukrainians, administer projects remotely from Kyiv or Warsaw, and distribute financial resources through Ukrainian implementing partners. Its presence in an organisational directory tells us relatively little about who is actually doing the work.
The distinction matters because the international humanitarian world has developed a curious vocabulary in which institutions are frequently described as operating in places where the most visible practical work is undertaken by others. An international NGO may announce that it is providing assistance in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast when what it means is that it has financed a Ukrainian charity that undertakes the relevant activities. There is nothing inherently objectionable about this arrangement, and in many circumstances it is an excellent way of providing humanitarian assistance. Nevertheless, the language of international humanitarianism can obscure the identity of those who assume the operational risks, maintain relationships with local communities and carry out the exhausting daily business of assisting people whose lives have been shattered by war.
Dnipro provides a particularly interesting environment in which to examine this phenomenon. Unlike Lviv, which has developed a substantial international volunteer community and a social infrastructure that caters to foreigners, Dnipro is predominantly a Ukrainian city in the most immediate sense of the expression. It does not possess the same concentration of expatriate social establishments, internationally oriented charitable gatherings and English-speaking informal networks that facilitate contact between foreign volunteers in western Ukraine. A foreigner arriving in Dnipro cannot necessarily expect to discover an established community of compatriots who will introduce him to the local humanitarian scene. Instead, he must engage directly with Ukrainians, and that may be an altogether more illuminating experience.
There are several possible explanations for the apparent scarcity of accessible foreign volunteers in Dnipro, and the first is the simplest. Dnipro is dangerous. Although the city remains a substantial distance from some of the principal areas of ground fighting, it is exposed to Russian missile and drone attacks, and its geographical position makes it an essential staging point for humanitarian operations in more hazardous districts to the east and south. Humanitarian warehouses and supply infrastructure have themselves suffered substantial damage. The United Nations reported in its September 2026 humanitarian review that attacks during May and June had destroyed aid supplies worth more than US$2.5 million in Dnipro alone. For international organisations bound by elaborate security protocols, insurance arrangements and duties of care towards their personnel, the advantages of maintaining substantial expatriate contingents in such an environment may be outweighed by the risks.
A Ukrainian volunteer, however, does not necessarily enjoy the luxury of withdrawing to a safer location. His family may live in Dnipro, his employment may depend upon the local economy and his friends may be serving in military formations deployed nearby. The dangers that an international humanitarian organisation must calculate through formal risk assessments are, for him, part of the ordinary circumstances of existence. This does not mean that Ukrainians are indifferent to danger or that foreigners are cowards. It means that the two groups confront fundamentally different sets of choices. A foreign volunteer may decide whether to accept the risks of Dnipro, whereas a Ukrainian resident must decide how to continue living amid those risks.
The second explanation lies in the changing economics of international humanitarian assistance. The extraordinary mobilisation of foreign sympathy and financial resources that accompanied Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 could never continue indefinitely at its original intensity. As the war has become prolonged, international donors have faced competing demands, charitable organisations have exhausted their emergency reserves and political attention has moved towards other international crises. The United Nations estimated that 10.8 million people would need humanitarian assistance in Ukraine during 2026, while seeking US$2.3 billion to support 4.1 million of the most vulnerable. The scale of continuing need is therefore immense, but humanitarian resources have become increasingly constrained.
These changes have practical consequences for the international presence in Ukrainian cities. When funding contracts, expatriate positions are expensive and vulnerable to elimination, while locally recruited personnel can often undertake equivalent work at lower cost. Some international organisations have withdrawn their physical presence altogether. Oxfam, for example, announced the completion of its planned departure from Ukraine in August 2026, describing a transition towards strengthening the resilience of Ukrainian partners. Such developments are not evidence that international organisations have universally abandoned Ukraine, but they illustrate a broader tendency towards reducing foreign operational footprints while relying more heavily upon Ukrainian organisations.
The third explanation may be more revealing, because it concerns the nature of Ukrainian civil society itself. Ukraine is not a country in which the arrival of international humanitarian organisations created the first meaningful structures of voluntary assistance. On the contrary, Ukraine possessed an unusually vigorous tradition of civic mobilisation long before February 2022. The Revolution of Dignity, Russia’s first invasion in 2014 and the subsequent years of conflict in the Donbas generated extensive networks of volunteers, charitable foundations, community associations and informal institutions. When the full-scale invasion began, these networks expanded with extraordinary speed, often assuming responsibilities that in other countries might have been assigned to governmental or international agencies.
Dnipro became one of the principal centres of this mobilisation. Its industrial infrastructure, transport connections and proximity to eastern Ukraine made it a natural location for humanitarian supply chains, while its population possessed the organisational skills necessary to assemble assistance on a remarkable scale. Local volunteer groups established warehouses, organised evacuation transport, collected donations and coordinated assistance to displaced people and military personnel. A Norwegian Refugee Council research report describing locally led humanitarian engagement identified Dnipro’s humanitarian hubs as important links between national supply networks and the distribution systems operating closer to the Donbas front. This was not a peripheral civic contribution to an international humanitarian enterprise. It was a Ukrainian system of mobilisation into which international assistance could be incorporated.
Indeed, one of the more uncomfortable conclusions emerging from research into humanitarian activities in Ukraine is that international organisations have sometimes misunderstood the society into which they arrived. Many humanitarian institutions have developed their expertise in countries where governmental institutions are weak, civil society has limited resources and external agencies must construct much of the infrastructure necessary to deliver assistance. Ukraine presents a substantially different environment, characterised by a functioning state, sophisticated private enterprises, highly educated professionals and established civic networks. Refugees International identified this problem as early as 2022, describing the difficulties international organisations encountered in adapting their conventional operating assumptions to Ukraine’s existing capacities.
This may help explain why local Ukrainians in Dnipro have proved more accessible than foreign humanitarian representatives. The Ukrainian volunteer is not necessarily a professional humanitarian administrator. He may be an engineer, accountant, businessman, teacher or medical practitioner who has assumed additional responsibilities because his country requires them. His work may depend upon direct relationships with people he knows rather than elaborate institutional hierarchies. When approached by a journalist seeking to understand the humanitarian situation in Dnipro, he may perceive an opportunity to explain his work and attract additional support. His involvement in civil society is part of his personal life and his sense of civic responsibility, rather than merely the performance of a contractual obligation.
International humanitarian personnel may inhabit an altogether different administrative environment. They may be required to refer enquiries to communications departments, obtain authorisation before granting interviews or avoid conversations concerning operationally sensitive activities. Their offices may be overwhelmed by requests for information or constrained by security regulations that discourage informal meetings. The absence of a reply to a journalist is not, by itself, evidence of incompetence, dishonesty or a lack of humanitarian activity. Nevertheless, an organisation that describes itself as operating in a particular city but proves persistently inaccessible raises legitimate questions about how effectively it communicates its work to the wider community.
This brings us to the difficult question of humanitarian visibility. International organisations depend upon donors, and donors reasonably expect evidence that their contributions are being used effectively. As a consequence, international humanitarianism has developed an extensive apparatus of reporting, monitoring, public relations and institutional branding. Photographs of aid deliveries, maps displaying operational coverage and accounts of completed projects have become indispensable elements of humanitarian fundraising. Yet the people who appear in those photographs distributing assistance may be Ukrainian employees or volunteers, while the international organisation receives much of the public recognition because its name appears on the grant documentation.
The financial imbalance has been substantial. A 2024 Refugees International survey reported that less than one per cent of humanitarian funding tracked by the United Nations had gone directly to local and national non-governmental organisations in Ukraine, despite their central role in humanitarian delivery. This figure does not mean that Ukrainian organisations received only one per cent of all humanitarian resources, because considerable funding reached them indirectly through international intermediaries. Nevertheless, it illustrates the distance that can exist between those who control humanitarian finances and those who deliver humanitarian services. Dnipro’s predominance of locally accessible civic actors should encourage examination of whether these financial and organisational relationships adequately recognise the contribution of Ukrainians themselves.
There is also a more subtle cultural dimension to the difference between foreign and Ukrainian volunteer communities. Amongst foreigners who arrive in Ukraine to assist during the war, there is an understandable desire to find meaning in their work. The experience of contributing to a nation’s resistance against aggression can be personally transformative, and many foreign volunteers have sacrificed comfortable lives and accepted genuine danger in order to help. Yet foreign volunteering may sometimes acquire a social identity of its own, particularly in cities where substantial expatriate communities exist. Foreign volunteers meet one another, exchange stories, establish friendships and develop informal hierarchies based upon their respective contributions to the war effort. The humanitarian mission and the social experience of being a foreign volunteer can become intertwined.
Dnipro offers fewer opportunities for this particular form of expatriate social existence. The city’s civic environment appears to be focused primarily upon Ukrainians undertaking work for other Ukrainians, often in circumstances of considerable personal hardship. A foreigner seeking to participate must adapt to the local environment rather than expecting the local environment to accommodate him. Language becomes more important, introductions must be earned through personal trust and the practical value of one’s contribution may count for more than one’s nationality or organisational title. This is not necessarily a comfortable experience for a foreigner accustomed to the internationally oriented atmosphere of Lviv or Kyiv, but it may be a valuable corrective to assumptions about who is helping whom.
One should nevertheless resist the temptation to romanticise Ukrainian civil society while dismissing the international humanitarian sector. Local volunteer organisations face their own problems of exhaustion, financial uncertainty, institutional fragmentation and administrative weakness. The demands of a prolonged war can place intolerable burdens upon people who receive little or no remuneration for their activities. International organisations may provide technical expertise, equipment, financial resources and institutional continuity that local groups would struggle to obtain independently. Indeed, the International Organization for Migration’s 2026 response plan reports that 93 per cent of the 91 NGOs with which it had collaborated in Ukraine were local organisations, demonstrating how international resources and Ukrainian implementation can operate together.
The question is therefore not whether foreign humanitarian organisations should operate in Dnipro, but what their appropriate role should be. The most effective international organisations may ultimately be those that do not seek to dominate the city’s civil society at all. Their contribution may consist of providing resources, training, equipment and financial accountability mechanisms to Ukrainian institutions that already understand local needs and possess the relationships necessary to address them. In this model, international humanitarian assistance becomes less visible precisely because it becomes more successful. The foreign organisation does not need to place its own expatriate representatives at the centre of every activity in order to justify its existence.
Yet this approach creates an obligation of transparency. If international organisations fund Ukrainian humanitarian operations, they should be candid about which activities they undertake directly and which are implemented by Ukrainian partners. They should distinguish between maintaining an operational presence in Dnipro and financing activities that take place there without substantial foreign staff involvement. They should also recognise that a Ukrainian organisation delivering assistance deserves public acknowledgment for its work, irrespective of whether an international institution supplied the financial resources. The language of partnership ought to reflect the realities of operational responsibility rather than merely the administrative arrangements under which grants are distributed.
My experience in seeking contacts in Dnipro has therefore raised questions that extend far beyond the particular difficulties of arranging journalistic interviews. Why do some foreign humanitarian networks appear so much less accessible than the Ukrainian organisations with which they supposedly cooperate? To what extent have international organisations reduced their direct presence while continuing to describe themselves as operationally active in eastern Ukraine? Are Ukrainian civil society organisations receiving an appropriate proportion of the resources allocated to humanitarian assistance, and do international donors sufficiently understand the practical importance of the people who remain in dangerous cities when foreign personnel have withdrawn?
These questions should not be interpreted as allegations of misconduct against any particular organisation. The available evidence does not justify concluding that foreign charities claiming activities in Dnipro are fictitious or that their work is without value. Rather, it suggests that the conventional international description of humanitarian activities in Ukraine may obscure a more interesting reality. The Ukrainian voluntary sector is not merely an auxiliary branch of a foreign-funded humanitarian enterprise. It is the essential foundation upon which much of that enterprise depends, and the distinction becomes particularly apparent in a city where international visibility is limited but Ukrainian civic activity remains vigorous.
There is a broader philosophical issue here, concerning the relationship between personal responsibility and institutional obligation. The international humanitarian worker is generally accountable to an organisation, a donor and a body of professional regulations. The Ukrainian volunteer may be accountable primarily to his conscience, his neighbours and the people whose lives depend upon his assistance. Neither system of responsibility is necessarily superior in every circumstance, but their motivations and incentives are different. Institutions can relocate, terminate programmes or redefine their geographical priorities. A person whose home and community are in danger cannot so easily regard the problem as belonging to somebody else.
This may be the most important explanation for the warmth of the Ukrainian reception in Dnipro. For local volunteers, humanitarian assistance is not an abstract professional subject. It is inseparable from the lives of relatives serving at the front, neighbours displaced by fighting, elderly people unable to evacuate and friends injured or killed in Russian attacks. When somebody expresses a genuine interest in understanding these circumstances, the conversation is not necessarily mediated through an institution’s external communications policy. It is an opportunity to explain the reality of a war that has become inseparable from ordinary life.
Foreigners sometimes arrive in Ukraine imagining that they are entering a country whose principal need is assistance from the outside world. Dnipro offers a salutary correction to this perspective. The city has been sustaining a substantial part of Ukraine’s humanitarian and military resilience through the work of Ukrainians themselves, and international assistance operates within that larger national effort. Whatever the precise reasons for the absence or inaccessibility of so many foreign humanitarian contacts, the experience of seeking them and finding welcoming Ukrainians instead suggests that we may have been looking at the war through the wrong end of the telescope.
The most significant story about the civil society of Dnipro may not be where the foreign volunteers have gone. It may be that, after more than four years of full-scale war, the Ukrainians are still there, doing the work that their country requires of them and welcoming those who take a genuine interest in their efforts. That is a story of civic endurance, institutional independence and national solidarity that deserves far greater international recognition than it presently receives. It is also a reminder that Ukraine is not merely the beneficiary of a humanitarian response organised elsewhere. Ukraine is herself the principal author of that response, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the great eastern city of Dnipro.
