Stéphane Dujarric described the direct transfer of money, mostly to those who have been displaced and lost their jobs due to the fighting, as “a continuation of crucial assistance that we, along with our partners, have provided in most regions of Ukraine”.

He said last year, some six million people across different parts of Ukraine had been provided with cash, and this year more than $200 million had been transferred to help Ukrainians meet their basic needs.

“This was made possible through the coordinated efforts of [more than] 20 partners, including UN agencies, national non-governmental organizations and international non-governmental organizations as well”, said Mr. Dujarric.

One billion target

He added that the target overall, was to provide cash assistance to around 4.4 million people, transferring close to $1 billion in total.

And overall, humanitarians are hoping to provide some kind of relief to more than 11 million people of the nearly 18 million who need assistance in Ukraine.

“To this end, we and our partners requested $3.9 billion for the response”, the UN Spokesperson continued. “So far, we received a total of $900 million so we count on the international community to sustain its support to the humanitarian response in the country, as the war continues to drive a grave humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, particularly in the east and the south.

Over the weekend, the UN managed to provide shelter materials and other vital items to more than 1,500 people in a community along the Dnipro River in Kherson region.

It’s the first time that aid workers have managed to reach the area just a few hundred metres from the frontline, “where the level of destruction is appalling”, according to the UN humanitarian affairs coordination office (OCHA) in Ukraine.

UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the country, Denise Brown, said on Monday that in getting two convoys into the Donetsk and Kherson regions last Friday, UN teams were “inching our way towards the frontline, to relieve the suffering of these communities who are under constant shelling”.