The Hidden Crisis: Elderly and Disabled Ukrainians Caught in Conflict Zone
In a cramped city apartment on Kharkiv's outskirts, this aged lady of 78 has dropped everything and refused to leave her fifth-floor apartment for more than three months! Without a functioning lift and with her arthritis terrible from all the limping she does about in the building, threatened at every moment by artillery fire, she is one of the most vulnerable and unnoticed casualties to this Ukraine-Russia war—elderly and disabled civilians caught in the pockets of active clashes.
"I hear the explosions, but where would I go? How would I get there?" she asks, her voice barely audible with the occasional sound of shelling in the distance. "My neighbors bring food when they can, but many have fled."
An Invisible Population in Crisis
According to the latest estimate released by the United Nations, around 30% of those still in the conflict areas of Ukraine are elderly or disabled persons-an estimated 2.7 million people who face extraordinary difficulties rarely depicted in mainstream war reporting. Ukraine's population was already one of the oldest in Europe, with around one in four persons in Ukraine being 60 years or older.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Social Policy, evacuation rates among people with mobility issues are reflected to be 40% less than that for the general population, hence leading to what MSF has described as a "shadow humanitarian emergency."
What creates the fiercest situation for this plight is the convergence of different vulnerability factors: age, disability, poverty, and isolation create nearly impossible survival conditions.
Being Already Trapped by Accessibility Barriers
Almost irremediable are the challenges posed by evacuations in the case of mobility impairments, with evacuation itself considered the most elemental act of survival.
"Standard evacuation protocols simply don't account for people who cannot run, climb, or quickly board transportation," said Ukrainian doctor Marta Kohut who specialized in geriatric care. "When evacuations happen quickly under threat of bombardment, those with disabilities are often left behind by necessity."
This has led to an accumulation of vulnerable populations in some of the most hazardous areas. Recent humanitarian mapping highlights alarming overlaps between areas of heavy fighting and communities with a high percentage of elderly and disabled people, especially in smaller towns and villages of eastern Ukraine.
The physical environment literally turns into a weapon against persons with disabilities. Damaged infrastructure is rendered into an urban obstacle course:-
- Elevator failures in high-rise buildings become "vertical prisons," as aid workers describe them.
- The destruction of ramps and accessible pathways means there is no way out for them.
- Power outages disable life-supporting medical equipment.
- Interruption to public transportation bars access to health-care facilities.
"Ivan Dimitrov says, who uses a wheelchair and lives in Mykolaiv, "Everyone ran to the basement shelter. I watched them go. The shelter has 15 steps down—it might as well be.
Critical Healthcare Collapse
For elderly and disabled Ukrainians, a halt in medical care often represents a more imminent danger than direct military action.
According to a recent assessment by the World Health Organization, 62% of older Ukrainians living in conflict zones say they are unable to get the medicine they need regularly, and 43% have seen their existing chronic medical conditions deteriorate since the onset of the conflict. The effects are quantifiable - there are now about 30% more preventable deaths among the elderly in occupied territories than before the war.
The chronic conditions that many manage with preventative medication—diabetes, heart disease, hypertension—become immediately life-threatening if the medications do not arrive. In the meantime, specialized needs, such as dialysis or oxygen therapy, become nearly impossible to sustain.
“Every day we see the unnecessary loss of life,” says Kateryna Shevchenko, a nurse with Médecins Sans Frontières in eastern Ukraine. “The simplest conditions become fatal without basic care.
Mental health effects accentuate physical vulnerabilities. A study in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry reports substantially elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress among older people in Ukraine living in conflict-affected regions, with isolation being a major cause.
Institutional Protection Systems Under Pressure
Before the war, some 100,000 Ukrainians resided in institutions -- nursing homes, psychiatric facilities, and disability care centers. At least 43% of such facilities have been damaged, abandoned, or are now difficult to access because of the fighting, according to Ukraine's Ombudsman for Human Rights.
The results have been catastrophic. In one city, Mariupol, up to 90% of institutional residents in the occupied areas were cut off from specialized care during the siege of the city.
“[Care] institutions need stable infrastructure — electricity, water, heating, supply chains,” says social policy researcher Oleksandr Ponomarenko. “War cuts through every link in this chain all at once.”
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