What loss of USAID funding could mean for Ukraine

A nationwide Ukrainian HIV-testing service, which has detected and referred almost 10,000 cases since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country, stopped its work abruptly last week. The METIDA project is funded through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, and is among numerous wartime assistance efforts interrupted by the Trump administration’s 90-day stop-work order and pause on U.S. foreign aid spending. “It’s really critical to keep the HIV epidemic under control — it’s obvious if people are not getting tested and not knowing their status, they’re spreading the virus,” Andriy Klepikov, executive director of the Alliance for Public Health which delivers the project, told Devex over the phone from Ukraine capital Kyiv. “Currently we are using all possible ways to find funds to temporarily cover the 90-day period,” he said. “But it’s difficult to find money because everybody now is searching for funds to cover this gap.” Devex spoke to NGOs on the ground and INGOs to discover the impact of the USAID announcement. Some have halted activities entirely and begun layoffs. Others have launched desperate pleas for alternative funding, and in some cases, have found it. Some organizations Devex contacted were anxious about speaking out in case it puts future funding at risk. Others have sounded the alarm that the aid freeze, at a time when war support is in decline, could be handing Russia a ticket to victory. The vast scale of support USAID funded multiple sectors across Ukraine — including lifesaving humanitarian assistance, health systems, equipment to restore heat and electricity supplies after Russian attacks on energy systems, supporting farmers and food exporters to supply grain worldwide, and funding for anti-corruption and European integration reforms. According to the USAID Ukraine website, before it was taken offline on Saturday, the agency has provided $2.6 billion in humanitarian aid, $5 billion in development assistance, and more than $30 billion in direct budget support to the country since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. About 1.1 million people are currently internally displaced in the country and 2.4 million need support, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA. On Tuesday last week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said via Telegram that the state could provide part of the financing needed for affected programs. “We will discuss some with Europeans and Americans,” he said. “These include many areas — from communications and digitalization to support for veterans, schools, hospitals, and reconstruction.” An INGO delivering lifesaving work in Ukraine sent Devex an anonymous comment describing the devastation the order has wrought on its work. “Globally, it represents over 20% of our income, so it is a major hit. It means we’re having to lay off staff in our affected programs and massively cut costs everywhere.” “We are aware of other INGOs that are significantly more impacted,” it added. Keeping and losing faith Klepikov is hopeful METIDA might be able to restart some of its treatment and testing activities. On Feb. 1, the U.S. Department of State granted PEPFAR a “limited waiver to implement urgent life-saving HIV treatment services.” But Klepikov has not received any official communication about the waiver and said that there was a lack of clarity around other important services, such as the provision of pre-exposure prophylaxis medication that can reduce the risk of HIV infection. The scale of this project means it would be impossible to find a replacement donor, Klepikov said. But he remained confident the U.S. administration would not abandon such “very important and needed work.” Meanwhile, the alliance has managed to source temporary alternative funding to continue smaller programs. This includes a mobile integrated health service reaching up to 3,000 people in remote rural areas of the Zaporizhzhia Region. “In some areas near to the front line we have to use anti-drone systems because mobile clinics are a potential target,” Klepikov said. “Doctors work in bulletproof vests and helmets — it’s very risky work but at the same time very required.” One of the first organizations to raise public awareness of the order in Ukraine was Veteran Hub. The national support service for soldiers, veterans, and their families offers a free phone line that handles about 1,300 calls a month, and two walk-in hubs. They offer legal advice, psychological services, and personal support, for example, if a family member has gone missing in military action. Last week, the team of about 100 staff members was forced to close the phone line and one hub in the Vinnytsia region. “We were about to lose 31 people on the team, most of them families of veterans, soldiers, the missing, prisoners of war and the deceased,” Veteran Hub co-founder Ivona Kostyna told Devex over the phone. “It was a horrible place to be at that moment.” By appealing to existing contacts within the Ukrainian business sector, which the organization has fostered since its foundation in 2018 as it advises business owners on how to employ veterans, it has been able to secure enough funding to reopen the phone line for the duration of the 90-day pause. Thanks to funding from private donors and the local city authority, it will also reopen its shuttered hub. But Kostyna warned that its future is unclear. “It will be a huge challenge for us to find sustainable funding that will last years, not months,” she said. “That’s something that was very crucial about U.S. funding. Until last Saturday, we saw the U.S. as an ally that you could rely on. … Now we feel less safe about such cooperation.” Kostyna said many organizations impacted by the order in Ukraine had not spoken out publicly, afraid of repercussions. Veteran Hub had no choice but to go public because it needed to inform its service users, she said. Conversely, she noted that some are still optimistic, though she isn’t one of them.“[Some people think] that this will pass in a few weeks,” she said. “[Some people think] Ukraine will get an exception [from the U.S. government] for everything.” Russian windfall Another of USAID’s objectives in Ukraine was to strengthen the role of media in democratic processes and expand citizen’s access to information. This is imperative in regions close to the frontline, where internet access is intermittent and Russia tries to spread disinformation, according to the CEO of the Association of Independent Regional Publishers of Ukraine Oksana Brovko. Over the phone, Brovko described her concern that independent regional newspapers providing essential public service information closed down last week. She said that even some regions largely occupied by Russian forces maintained local newsrooms where free papers kept people informed on how to find clean water, how to react to shelling, where bomb shelters were located, or evacuation routes. But that funding came via USAID — “The sole way was through grant support from the U.S.,” she said. “These newspapers cannot make a huge call to find another form of financial support.” “If we keep silent close to frontline territories because we don’t have financial support, Russia can fill this information silence with their information,” she said. “It looks like a very good win situation for Russians right now.” Preexisting condition Ukraine is about to reach its third anniversary of full-scale war. Over that period, total humanitarian funding has fallen year-on-year according to OCHA data, from $4.6 billion in 2022 to $3.7 billion in 2023 and $2.5 billion in 2024. OCHA’s Ukraine Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2025, published last month, also highlighted that operating costs in the country had risen as a result of inflation. At the Saint Nicholas Children’s Hospital of the First Medical Union of Lviv, director of development Zoryana Ivanyuk pointed at a board in a corridor covered with donors’ logos, including private, national, and international organizations. “The situation has really changed now,” she sighed. “We had really a lot of donors during the first year. But now the amount of support is really lower, and it’s getting lower and lower all the time.” The hospital treats children from all over the country, including those injured by blasts and needing long-term rehabilitation. “People have run out of money, of patience,” she said. “They have had enough of Ukraine and war in their lives.” The lucky ones Some large operators in Ukraine are unaffected by the USAID decision. World Central Kitchen, which has provided millions of meals for war-affected people, confirmed over email USAID does not fund its work. The International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, issued a statement that suggested its operations were secure — for now at least. “We are evaluating the potential short-term impact of this decision on our operations around the world,” said ICRC chief spokesperson Christian Cardon. Former USAID Administrator Samantha Power visited Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy twice in Kyiv. After her latest visit in October last year Zelenskyy said: “We appreciate all American support for Ukraine: military, political, economic, humanitarian.” Devex approached USAID to comment on its work in Ukraine, but the organization was unable to respond. Despite the mammoth challenges ahead and nerves about what might happen next, Klepikov told Devex the country would prevail. “We are resilient,” he said. “War has taught us to do everything to protect human lives.”