Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the country and its society have not only come to comprise the largest humanitarian crisis context on the European continent since the wars in Yugoslavia and its successor states from 1992 to 1999 and in Chechnya from 1994 to 2000, but also one of the largest acute humanitarian crises globally. Based on the concepts of humanitarian space and humanitarian dilemma, available aid data, policy research, and a set of qualitative interviews with local and international relief practitioners in Ukraine, this contribution treats the question if, and how, relief organizations are to deliver aid to affected populations in portions of southeastern Ukraine that remain under Russian occupation in the event of a frozen conflict. It examines whether the conventional approaches and humanitarian principles of the international aid system remain tenable in such circumstances. .
Read the full paper.